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FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet

679 points by jkupferman 12y ago

mgkimsal 12y ago
"Even one of the Democratic commissioners who voted yes on Thursday expressed some misgivings about how the proposal had been handled. "I believe the process that got us to rulemaking today was flawed," she said. "I would have preferred a delay."" --------------------------------- But... she voted yes anyway. WTF?
- ColinDabritz 12y ago
  For whatever reasons, she must have felt moving forward with a rule was better than not, regardless of the process issues. I may disagree with the decision, but I understand her position.
  - Alupis 12y ago
    "I would have done this differently. I would have taken the time to consider the future" Yet she did not consider the future one bit.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > But... she voted yes anyway. WTF? She doesn't think the actual NPRM represents the best way to acheive the objectives it seeks to serve, but agrees with the objectives. As an NPRM isn't an adopted regulations, its a proposal which sets out objectives, provides concrete proposed steps, and seeks public comment on those steps and alternatives to them, it may make sense to vote for an NPRM (especially when you believe that there is a large and active community that will provide alternatives) when you agree with the objectives but have strong disagreements on some elements of the implementation, rather than voting no and preventing any rulemaking directed at the objectives from proceeding. She would prefer to delay and get a better (from her perspective) proposal before the public, but would rather have the process moving forward that will allow adopting rules than have the process stalled. The three that voted for the NPRM are the three commissioners that, differ as they might on the details, believe that the FCC should be pursuing net neutrality ("Open Internet") regulation, the two that voted against are the two that think that the FCC should not and that things like paid prioritization and all the other things net neutrality seeks to restrict should be permitted without restriction. Much of the news coverage has inverted reality and portrayed the proposal as a change to permit paid prioritization, but it is a change (in relevant part) to prevent it, within the constraints imposed by the D.C. Circuit when they struck down the last FCC order intended to do that.
kirualex 12y ago
Yet another blow to Net-Neutrality...
- berrypicker 12y ago
  I don't see a problem. You can switch ISP if your current one isn't net-neutral. Why should you force businesses to operate in certain way? They're not breaking any laws.
  - trurl 12y ago
    Clearly you aren't living in the United States. My choices are Comcast, Comcast, and Comcast. I'm really starting to think mesh networks are going to be the only solution.
    - mariusz79 12y ago
      You forgot about Comcast. :)
    - berrypicker 12y ago
      Are there no smaller, 'independent' ISPs which aren't part of conglomerates that are unlikely to remain net-neutral?
      - trurl 12y ago
        Again, you clearly aren't from around here. To be less facetious, I could also choose AT&T DSL, but they don't offer competitive bandwidth. And they aren't exactly a small independent ISP. There might be ISPs that offer "business class" service, but their prices probably start at least 3x what I currently pay. I'm not even sure they would offer service in an apartment complex either.
      - johnward 12y ago
        Not in most areas of the US.
      - 12y ago
forgotAgain 12y ago
The fix is in. Now what are you going to do about it?
xhrpost 12y ago
So what happened? It seems like just yesterday that the FCC was the one creating the rules around net neutrality. A federal court over-turns this and all of a sudden the FCC decides to go the complete opposite direction?
- byuu 12y ago
  Tom Wheeler happened. Despite his industry and lobbying connections, he raised a lot of money for Obama's campaign, so he was appointed as the new FCC chairman.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > So what happened? Media misrepresentation happened. > It seems like just yesterday that the FCC was the one creating the rules around net neutrality. It still is. > A federal court over-turns this and all of a sudden the FCC decides to go the complete opposite direction? No, this is an attempt to revive, within the constraints of the court decision, what was struck down. The reporting that this is about "allowing" or "considering" paid prioritization ignores the fact that, as a result of the court decision, paid prioritization is allowed now, without any restrictions. This proposal would declare some paid prioritization (where it is offered exclusively to an affiliate of the ISP) presumptively illegal, and seek to restrict paid prioritization even outside of that which is presumptively illegal. This is in the exact same direction (though not the exact same mechanism, since that was ruled outside of the FCC's authority) as prior net neutrality orders from the FCC, which is why the same 3-2 partisan alignment on the FCC exists on the issue that has existed on net neutrality as a broad concept for quite some time.
altcognito 12y ago
I'm confused by this headline (and a bit by the proceeding). After watching the FCC hearing, it seemed like all of the people who were "for" open internet, and spoke of it from the consumer level (including Wheeler) voted for the proposal. The commissioners that said the FCC didn't have jurisdiction to regulate and to leave the market alone, voted against the proposal. Isn't it the case that if they had voted against this, that we would have been in the exact same boat we are in now and therefore the agreement that Netflix signed would continue unabated? In that case, it really didn't matter what they voted.
- opendais 12y ago
  The people at the FCC are saying the opposite of what they mean. Yes, we are in the same boat with Netflix having to pay for bandwidth as before. However, by the FCC officially sanctioning something that would have been technically illegal before the Federal ruling, they've basically reversed course and declared open season on content providers the ISPs don't like.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - rayiner 12y ago
    > The people at the FCC are saying the opposite of what they mean. No, net-neutrality proponents are saying the opposite of what they mean. They couch this in terms of "protecting the open internet." Except there never was an "open internet." Before the short-lived net neutrality regulations, cable companies were allowed to do whatever they wanted with their network. And that's true now that the regulations have been struck down. The cable companies do not need any sort of action by the FCC to be able to come to these agreements. What net-neutrality proponents want is new regulations to keep cable companies from doing something that they currently are allowed to do, and except for a small period of time, were historically always allowed to do.
    - opendais 12y ago
      If the government blocks fair competition in a market [through controlling who can provide last mile connections by right of way], they need to provide regulation to enforce fairness on the other end [those that provide last mile connections can't pick and choose whose packets they carry and at what QoS]. There used to be counterweights involved [e.g. Comcast had to play ball fairly] which effectively forced neutrality. Netflix, for instance, wasn't a 'problem' back in 2007 for the ISPs. We didn't have the ISPs pulling QoS BS like this in the 90s because people could and would switch providers. They can't now unless they want to go back to using dialup.
spacefight 12y ago
"What a nice internet connection you have there. It would be a real shame if something happened to it...". So we had a good time, haven't we...
rgumus 12y ago
Well, this is no coincidence. ISPs have been working on this for years.
- wavefunction 12y ago
  ISPs or telecoms? Telecoms have been working on this for years.
  - spacefight 12y ago
    Sometimes, ISPs are both.
    - hgsigala 12y ago
      Well, that's the issue. ISP's are being classified as telecoms.
- spacefight 12y ago
  No, it's not. But the term "work" implies that someone really did some work and produced something out of value... but these efforts were just the work of money in the pockets of lobbyists and policy makers. What a said day.
dethstar 12y ago
Most important quote since the title is misleading: " The proposal is not a final rule, but the three-to-two vote on Thursday is a significant step forward on a controversial idea that has invited fierce opposition from consumer advocates, Silicon Valley heavyweights, and Democratic lawmakers. "
ozh 12y ago
I hope there will be companies, upon being asked by an ISP to pay more for higher priority in their network, who will tell them to get the f*k off and advocate usage of VPN and anonymisers for their users so they're not identified as US residents.
- sinaa 12y ago
  And sadly the users would end up on the slow lanes !
- wlesieutre 12y ago
  Which only works until your VPN provider also refuses to pay up and gets put in the slow lane for having too much traffic.
  - deathhand 12y ago
    Business opportunity: Start VPN service and pay for the 'faster lane'. Advertise to users that they won't have throttled anything. ISPs become the utility that they should be.(Although at a higher cost to the end user)
- natdempk 12y ago
  I would like to see more companies go the way of shaming the ISPs. If people saw a message while a Netflix or Youtube video was buffering that said Comcast slows down this service artificially to make more money, I bet they would care more and would complain.
adamio 12y ago
The internet is slowly being transformed into cable television
- spacefight 12y ago
  Yes. And certain companies are pushing hard to make them succeed these days. Mozilla is one of them.
  - wtetzner 12y ago
    I don't understand this comment. Can you explain?
    - altcognito 12y ago
      DRM
    - jgh 12y ago
      I think it's a reference to the DRM thing from yesterday. Honestly it was more of Mozilla capitulating to the DRM gods, it's not like they're out there pounding the pavement for DRM.
      - spacefight 12y ago
        " Honestly it was more of Mozilla capitulating to the DRM gods, it's not like they're out there pounding the pavement for DRM." What's the difference?
        jgh 12y ago
        Most people just want the damn thing to work. Studios, whether the EFF and others like it or not, are not going to be changing their stance on DRM any time soon. It seems that more and more media is being consumed on a subscription basis than is being downloaded (see Spotify, Pandora, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu)... People are caring less about owning the content than having access to it. Currently with DRM there are a variety of plugins to support it in the browser. You have to download Widevine's plugin, or PlayReady's plugin, or whatever. It's just a better user experience if we really do need DRM to have some standardized DRM that the browsers can implement to make it seamless for the user. Note that I don't support DRM, I think it's a total waste of time because the movies aren't released to the wild by your average Joe who is downloading movies from Amazon. It just serves to hurt the average user. However I think that if we must have DRM, it should at least be something that is easier and works better for the average user. To answer your question: the difference is that Mozilla is not going out and promoting DRM. They are being pragmatic and reasonable in the less than ideal situation.
devx 12y ago
As an European I probably should be glad about this, since this combined with all the NSA spying issues and implementing backdoors into US products [1], should increasingly force innovation out of US and bring it to Europe, but somehow I'm not. All the ISPs will slow down all the major companies services, unless they pay up. There is no "faster" Internet. It's just "paying to get normal Internet back", like they've already done with Netflix: http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this-hilarious-graph-of-netflix-speeds-shows-the-importance-of-net-neutrality/ http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this-hilarious... [1] - http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-...
- buro9 12y ago
  Anything the US does they will eventually try and put into a trade agreement and force others to do too. We should never look over the water and be thankful it's not happened to us, because all we're seeing is how our (near) future is likely to be.
- kanwisher 12y ago
  More likely isps in other countries will look to this and decide they can make more money there. I think some Australian ips still have low gigabyte caps per month
ColinDabritz 12y ago
"And he promised a series of measures to ensure the new paid prioritization practices are done fairly and don't harm consumers." I have a measure in mind that won't harm consumers. Don't allow ISPs to discriminate against users regarding their already paid for internet traffic based on what they request. (Gee that sounds a lot like net neutrality.) Anything less is open for abuse. Perhaps "Discrimination" is a good word to tar this with, because it is. It's discrimination against companies, but it's also discrimination against users based on their tastes, preferences, and possibly socioeconomic status. To say nothing of de-facto censorship issues.
- natdempk 12y ago
  This seems like a valuable approach. If we could come up with examples of services like nonprofits that would be unable to pay and have their services negatively affected I think that could make people care about this issue. Maybe if we focused on things like Khan Academy, where their content is largely video. I think in that case its clear their money would be better spent developing a larger knowledge base instead of paying extortion money to ISPs, and it might strike a chord with average users.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    I think if people would get away from this nebulous message that mostly seems to benefit for-profit companies, and focus on issues like ensuring access for non-profits and educational organizations, that there would be a lot more bi-partisan traction. Right now, the optics, for those not invested in the issue, come across as being mostly about Comcast and Netflix bickering over profits.
    - adventured 12y ago
      If you focus the issue on non-profits and edu orgs, all the people trying to get this through will do is write a tiny little exclusion just for that concern (ie no slow lanes for non-profits). That's what they do every time there's a narrow concern raised against terrible legislation. It'll backfire big time, and waste valuable time.
JimmaDaRustla 12y ago
There should be a fast lane, it should also be the only lane.
hpaavola 12y ago
I don't get this whole net neautrality discussion that is going on in US (and maybe somewhere else, just haven't paid attention). Consumers pay based on speed of their connection. If ISP feels like the consumers are not paying enough, raise the prices. Service providers (not ISPs, but the ones who run servers that consumers connect to) pay based on speed of their connection. If the ISP feels like service providers are not paying enough, raise the prices. Why in the earth there is a need for slow/fast lanes and data caps? I'm four years old. So please keep that in mind when explaing this to me. :)
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  > I'm four years old. I feel like this isn't quite right.
  - masklinn 12y ago
    I'm guessing it's a reference to ELI5.
- masklinn 12y ago
  > Why in the earth there is a need for slow/fast lanes Because once the middleman has established himself as a monopoly and everybody has to go through him with no alternative, he can make bank by having everybody pay more. > and data caps? Lets the ISP oversubscribe even more and extract even more money out of the system without providing any additional value whatsoever.
- grandalf 12y ago
  > Why in the earth there is a need for slow/fast lanes and data caps? It's just an alternate way of pricing the service. You could ask similar questions about a lot of industries: - Why does Github charge the way it does and not just price the service per megabyte of data stored or per commit, etc? - Why do fast food restaurants offer free soft drink refills for $0.99 but not offer a single fill for $0.50? - Why do residential bandwidth providers not offer a service with guaranteed gamer-quality low latency? - Why do restaurants not offer a discount for customers who decline the free bread and water?
dragonwriter 12y ago
Its not a plan to allow paid priority on the Internet -- that's already allowed without any restriction since the old Open Internet order was struck down by the D.C. Circuit. Its a plan to, within the limits placed by the court order striking down the old plan, limit practices that violate the neutrality principles the FCC has articulated as part of its Open Internet efforts, including paid prioritization.
markcampbell 12y ago
Just making it easier for other countries. Shoot yourself in the foot, USA!
jqm 12y ago
People having the freedom to look at whatever they choose on a level playing field may not be in the interests of all concerned. The consolidation of media companies possibly served interests other than profits. Look at what Putin is allegedly doing with the internet. Maybe in a way the eventual intent of this is the same. And for the same purposes. I don't think we should let it get started just in case.
DevX101 12y ago
> approved in a three-to-two vote along party lines, Why the fuck are there party lines in the FCC? Or any other regulatory body for that matter?
- Havoc 12y ago
  For the same reason US politics in general are such a disaster...money driven lobbying.
- stvn 12y ago
  same reason there's party lines inherent in the verdict-deciders of the highest court in the land (blind justice). or in counties/cities where sheriffs are publicly-voted for (to serve and protect). political collusion -- sorry, persuasion -- is the dna of gov't office.
- hgsigala 12y ago
  The administration gets to nominate commissioners. The Senate confirms them. These are partisan bodies. The commissioners themselves have theories that fit into party politics as well.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Why the fuck are there party lines in the FCC? Or any other regulatory body for that matter? Because regulators aren't angels that descend from heaven, but people peforming a political function, appointed and confirmed by elected politicians. Or, more succinctly, because representative democracy.
  - shmerl 12y ago
    I think the question was not why there are members of different parties in the FCC, but why do they differ in this vote based on partisan membership? I.e. why would one party find these rules good while the other not? It's as if one likes net neutrality, while the other doesn't.
kenrikm 12y ago
Great! the FCC has officially sanctioned ISP's to be Trolls, demanding some gold to cross their bridge. This guarantees that there will always be multiple levels of peering speed even if the connections are upgraded and are able to easily handle the load. They won't want to give up their troll gold. That's just peachy, thanks for letting us get screwed over even more, Go USA! </Sarcasm>
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > the FCC has officially sanctioned ISP's to be Trolls, demanding some gold to cross their bridge. No, the DC Circuit did that when it struck down the FCC's old Open Internet order. The FCC has proposed a draft plan to limit harassment by the trolls, and asked the public for comments on how to make it better before "official sanction" is given to any rule.
lazyloop 12y ago
And now Comcast is planning data limits for all customers, what conincidence. http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/15/technology/comcast-data-limits/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/15/technology/comcast-data-limi...
- EvanAnderson 12y ago
  Metered service is, ultimately, what they want. They are envious of the kinds of margin wireless carriers are getting for data transfer over their networks.
joelhaus 12y ago
Can anyone make a serious argument on behalf of the carriers? Given the court decisions, the only way to protect the American people and the economy is to reclassify ISP's under Title II. For the skeptics, it appears to come down to the question: which route offers better prospects for upgrading our internet infrastructure? Choice one is relying on a for-profit corporation with an effective monopoly that is beholden to shareholders; Choice two is relying on elected politicians beholden to the voters. If you think there is a different argument that can be made on behalf of the carriers or if you can make the above one better, I would be very interested in hearing it.
- JoshTriplett 12y ago
  > Can anyone make a serious argument on behalf of the carriers? Given the court decisions, the only way to protect the American people and the economy is to reclassify ISP's under Title II. If you ignore the various arguments about ISPs trying to get paid twice for the same content, consider the possibility of an ISP and a major high-bandwidth content provider (YouTube, Netflix, Akamai, etc) trying to build a deal that's better for both of them and for the consumer. For instance, consider a CDN on the ISP's network. Consumers get content faster with lower latency; the content provider reduces their bandwidth costs by sending only one copy of $POPULAR_CONTENT rather than one per customer; the ISP has lower costs and makes its customers happier. Network neutrality would ban that, too. So this isn't the kind of thing that can be settled with simple blanket statements like "carriers should not make deals with content providers" or "all content should be treated identically". > For the skeptics, it appears to come down to the question: which route offers better prospects for upgrading our internet infrastructure? Choice one is relying on a for-profit corporation with an effective monopoly that is beholden to shareholders; Choice two is relying on elected politicians beholden to the voters. I'm always impressed when people can say with a straight face that politicians listen to voters. Voters don't care about issues like these, unless you can divide the issue across party lines and successfully make it one of the very small number of visible issues in a political campaign. I'd be more interested in seeing proposed solutions to the "effective monopoly" problem than to network neutrality. Solve the monopoly and issues like network neutrality will disappear along with it.
ryanhuff 12y ago
The investment in Obama by tech luminaries must be a huge disappointment.
- seanieb 12y ago
  Obama proclaiming his "commitment to net neutrality" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-mW1qccn8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-mW1qccn8k Tom Wheeler, the FCC Chairman, was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the majority Democratic U.S. Senate in 2013 (lead by Harry Reid who also claims to be pro net neutrality) is going to kill Net Neutrality. Please take some time to remind democratic politicians & supporters why practicing this sort of politics will come with a price.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Tom Wheeler, the FCC Chairman, was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the majority Democratic U.S. Senate in 2013 (lead by Harry Reid who also claims to be pro net neutrality) is going to kill Net Neutrality. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit already killed net neutrality. Wheeler is trying to resurrect it within the limits set by the Court (if you want more than that Court will allow under current statutory authority, you need to get more net neutrality friendly people in Congress so that they can change the statute to give the FCC more authority with regard to net neutrality.)
  - jblow 12y ago
    He also promised to close Guantanamo.
rsync 12y ago
peak internet: http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2010/12/peak-internet.html http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2010/12/peak-internet.h...
trurl 12y ago
We truly have the best government money can buy.
phkahler 12y ago
Who nominated this former lobbyist for the FCC spot? And who voiced/voted their approval? Voters should know.
todayiamme 12y ago
In my mind one of the key questions to ask in this debate is, if the eventual rise of a more closely controlled internet destroys this frontier, what's next? Right now thanks to a close confluence of remarkable factors, the barriers associated with starting something are almost negligible. The steady march of Moore's law combined with visualisation has given us servers that cost fractions of a penny to lease per hour. No one has had to beg or pay middlemen to use that server and reach customers around the world. At the other end, customers can finally view these bits, often streamed wirelessly, on magical slabs of glass and metal in their hand or what would have passed for a super-computer in a bygone age... All of this combined with a myriad of other factors has allowed anyone to start a billion dollar company. If this very fragile ecosystem is damaged and it dies out, where should someone ambitious go next to strike out on their own?
- ep103 12y ago
  They won't, this is how you kill a sector of the economy. Hopefully it won't come to that, but then again, that's why this is important.
coreymgilmore 12y ago
Simply put, this is absolutely terrible. How are start ups and small business web companies supposed to compete when their reach to consumers will automatically be slowed compared to larger competitors who pay for faster pipes? And who is to govern the rates (and tiers) of faster speeds? I can only assume ISPs will determine a cost based on aggregate bandwidth. But who is to say there can't be a fast lane, a faster lane, and a fastest lane? Sounds anti competitive to me (even the big name companies are against this!). Last: "The telecom companies argue that without being able to charge tech firms for higher-speed connections, they will be unable to invest in faster connections for consumers" > Google Fiber is cheaper for one. Seconds, the telecom giants have all increased subscriptions so there is more money there. And, as time goes along shouldn't these providers become more efficient and costs should decrease anyway? Must be nice to have a sudo-monopoly in some markets.
mariusz79 12y ago
It really is time to decentralize and move forward with mesh networking.
- ep103 12y ago
  What really are the issues involved? Just ensuring data integrity between the end client and the originating server?
- Omniusaspirer 12y ago
  Can you point me towards what I can do right now to move towards this? I already maintain an open guest network but I presume there's more I could be doing.
sinak 12y ago
The title and post are both quite misleading. The commissioners didn't approve Tom Wheeler's plan (to regulate the Internet under Section 706), but voted to go ahead with the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and commenting period. Tom Wheeler stated multiple times that Title II classification is still on the table. There'll now be a 120 day commenting period; 60 days of comments from companies and the public, and then 60 days of replies to those comments from the same. After that, the final rulemaking will happen. It's likely that the docket number for comments will continue to be 14-28, so if you want to ask the FCC to apply common carrier rules to the Internet under Title II, you can do so here: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display?z=r8e2h http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display?z=r8e2h and you can view previous comments here: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment_search/execute?proceeding=14-28 http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment_search/execute?proceeding=1... It's probably best to wait until the actual text of the NPRM is made public though, which'll likely happen very soon. Edit: WaPo have now updated the title of the article to make it more accurate: "FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet." Old title was "FCC approves plan to allow for paid priority on Internet."
- worace 12y ago
  Adding to the confusion, the NYT has an article up right now which seems to report the opposite. To quote from the NYT article lede: "WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 on Thursday to invite public comment on a set of proposed rules aimed at guaranteeing an open Internet, prohibiting high-speed Internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against legal content flowing through their pipes. " Am I reading this wrong or does that seem to say the opposite of what WaPo is saying?
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    You are reading it correctly. And the NYT seems to be reporting it correctly. While the text is not published yet anywhere I can see, the FCC fact sheet states that the proposal (direct quotes with only formatting/presentation changes) [1]: - Proposes to retain the definitions and scope of the 2010 rules, which governed broadband Internet access service providers, but not services like enterprise services, Internet traffic exchange and specialized services. - Proposes to enhance the existing transparency rule, which was upheld by the D.C. Circuit. The proposed enhancements would provide consumers, edge providers, and the Commission with tailored disclosures, including information on the nature of congestion that impacts consumers’ use of online services and timely notice of new practices. - As part of the revived "no-blocking" rule, proposes ensuring that all who use the Internet can enjoy robust, fast and dynamic Internet access. - Tentatively concludes that priority service offered exclusively by a broadband provider to an affiliate should be considered illegal until proven otherwise. - Asks how to devise a rigorous, multi-factor "screen" to analyze whether any conduct hurts consumers, competition, free expression and civic engagement, and other criteria under a legal standard termed "commercial reasonableness." - Asks a series of detailed questions about what legal authority provides the most effective means of keeping the Internet open: Section 706 or Title II. - Proposes a multi-faceted process to promptly resolve and head off disputes, including an ombudsperson to act as a watchdog on behalf of consumers and start-ups and small businesses. http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2014/db0515/DOC-327104A1.pdf http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2014...
hgsigala 12y ago
At this point everyone is officially invited to comment on the proposal. In around 60 days, the FCC will respond to your comments and redraft a proposal. Please comment! http://www.fcc.gov/comments http://www.fcc.gov/comments
Alupis 12y ago
Wait a minute! You mean my ever-increasing ISP fees at my home are not for the ISP to build a better network? You mean to tell me the ISP is now going to charge content providers for the ability to provide me with content that I'm already paying my ISP to deliver? You mean to tell me my content providers are now going to likely increase their fees to cope with this "fast lane"? This sounds an awful lot like extortion, and double billing. ISP's... you have one (1) job. Deliver packets.
Orthanc 12y ago
This doesn't sound good: "6. Enhance competition. The Commission will look for opportunities to enhance Internet access competition. One obvious candidate for close examination was raised in Judge Silberman’s separate opinion, namely legal restrictions on the ability of cities and towns to offer broadband services to consumers in their communities." http://www.fcc.gov/document/statement-fcc-chairman-tom-wheeler-fccs-open-internet-rules http://www.fcc.gov/document/statement-fcc-chairman-tom-wheel...
- gergles 12y ago
  The FCC wants to override state laws banning municipal competition. This is one thing they have right.
wielebny 12y ago
If that would pass - wouldn't be this a great opportunity for european hosting companies to seize the hosting market?
- wpietri 12y ago
  Probably not. Installing last-mile infrastructure is expensive. I understand that it's also often political; early cable TV installations were often local monopolies granted by local governments. Even if they tried, the incumbent ISPs can afford to underprice their services to make it uneconomical for competitors. E.g., they might lower prices drastically in competitive areas, and raise them in uncompetitive ones.
shmerl 12y ago
I don't really understand why it's divided by partisan membership.
Lewisham 12y ago
After weeks of public outcry over the proposal, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said the agency would not allow for unfair, or "commercially unreasonable," business practices. He wouldn't accept, for instance, practices that leave a consumer with slower downloads of some Web sites than what the consumer paid for from their Internet service provider. Because they've done such a bang-up job of that thus far..? It's no secret that at comparable advertised speed, Netflix on Comcast was far worse than Netflix on other ISPs. I'm not sure if they're really so deluded to think their enforcement is super great, or if they're just delivering placating sound bites.
mc_hammer 12y ago
anywhere that the internet can be routed via paid priority is the spot where the snooping can be installed.
rjohnk 12y ago
I know all the basic ins and outs of bandwidth. But why is this so complicated? I pay x amount for access to the Internet at x speed. I use internet. I pay the access fee.
carsonreinke 12y ago
Maybe I am missing something, but what is the argument ISPs have for this?
- seanieb 12y ago
  They are a very large contributor to Democratic politicians.
  - couchand 12y ago
    To be clear, the Democrat appointees are the ones pushing for a return to net neutrality.
    - seanieb 12y ago
      Factually acurate. And what do Obama & Congressional and Senate Democrats have to say about it? at most feigning some concern, but ultimately doing nothing. They don't care net neutrality, having somewhat plausible deniable and making Comcast, at&t et al happy is a win win for them. Do you really think the FCC chairman would do this or be able to do this against Obamas wishes?
- jsz0 12y ago
  Residential Internet access is almost universally sold as a 'best effort' class of service. There is no guarantee of availably or speeds outside of the provider's network.
markbnj 12y ago
This portion of the piece is interesting to me: "He wouldn't accept, for instance, practices that leave a consumer with slower downloads of some Web sites than what the consumer paid for from their Internet service provider." Definitions are tricky, but since we all pay for more bandwidth from our ISPs than we utilize from any one site (or almost all of us, I think), sticking to this rule would mean ISPs would not have the power to throttle individual data sources. Is that not a correct interpretation?
zacinbusiness 12y ago
I don't understand the ISP's point of view on this issue. Please correct me if I'm wrong. But it seems that ISPs are saying "Hey, we offer this great service. But bandwidth hungry applications like Netflix are just using too much data. And we need to throttle their data usage, or they need to pay us more money." The ISPs, then, are claiming to be victims. When in reality they simply promise services that they can't cost-effectively deliver. If I make contracts to give all of you a new pair of shoes every month. And you pay in advance. And then I run out of shoes before I can deliver on my promise...doesn't that mean that I don't know how to effectively run my business? Isn't that my fault for promising a service that I can't provide? Why would anyone feel sorry for me?
graycat 12y ago
Okay, from all the public discussion so far, NYT, WaPo, various fora, etc., I totally fail to 'get it'. Maybe I know too much or too little; likely a mixture of both. Help! More details anyone? To be more clear, let's consider: I pay my ISP, a cable TV company, so much a month for Internet service with speeds -- Mbps, million bits per second -- as stated in the service, maybe 25 Mbps upload (from me to the Internet) speed and 101 Mbps download speed. Now those speeds are just between my computer and my ISP. So, if I watch a video clip from some server in Romania, maybe I only get 2 Mbps for that video clip because that is all my ISP is getting from the server in Romania. And I am paying nothing per bit moved. So, if I watch 10 movies a day at 4 billion bytes per movie, even then I don't pay more. Now, to get the bits they send me, my ISP gets those from some connection(s) to the 'Internet backbone' or some 'points of presence' (PoP) or some such at various backbone 'tiers', 'peering centers', etc. Now, long common in such digital communications have been 'quality of service' (QoS) and 'class of service' (CoS). QoS can have to do with latency (how long have to wait until the first packet arrives?), 'jitter' (the time between packets varies significantly?), dropped packets (TCP notices and requests retransmission), out of order packets (to be straightened out by the TCP logic or just handled by TCP requesting retransmission), etc. Heck, maybe with low QoS some packets come with coffee stains from a pass by the NSA or some such! And CoS might mean, if a router gets too busy (the way the Internet is designed, that can happen), then some packets from a lower 'class' of service can be dropped. But my not very good understanding is that QoS and CoS, etc., don't much apply between my computer and my ISP and, really, apply mostly just to various parts of the 'Internet backbone' where the really big data rates are. And there my understanding is that QoS and CoS are essentially fixed and not adjusted just for me or Netflix, etc. E.g., once one of the packets headed for me gets on a wavelength on a long haul optical fiber, that packet will move just like many millions of others, that is, with full 'network neutrality'. So, I ask for some packets from a server at Netflix, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Vimeo, WaPo, NYT, HN, Microsoft's MSDN, etc. Then that server connects to essentially an ISP but with likely a connection to the Internet at 1, 10, 40, 100 Gbps (billion bits per second). And, really, my packets may come from Amazon Web Services (AWS), CloudFlare, Akamai, some colocation facility by Level3 or some such; e.g., the ads may come from some ad server quite far from where the data I personally was interested in came from. Note: I'm building a Web site, and my local colocation facility says that they can provide me with dual Ethernet connections to the Internet at 10 Gbps per connection. Note: Apparently roughly at present it is common commercial practice to have one cable with maybe 144 optical fibers each with a few dozen wavelengths of laser light (dense wavelength division multiplexing -- DWDM) with data rate of 40 or 100 Gbps per wavelength. So, there is me, a little guy, getting the packets for, say, a Web page. Various servers send the packets, they rattle around in various tiers of the Internet backbone, treated in the backbone like any other packets, arrive at my ISP, and are sent to me over coax to my neighborhood and to me. So, with this setup, just where could, say, Netflix be asked to pay more and for what? That is, Netflix is already paying their ISP. That ISP dumps the Netflix packets on the Internet backbone, and millions of consumer ISPs get the packets. My ISP is just a local guy; tough to believe that Netflix will pay them. Besides, there is no need for Netflix to pay my ISP since my ISP is already doing what they say, that is, as I can confirm with Web site http://www.speedtest.net http://www.speedtest.net I'm getting the speeds I paid my ISP for. Netflix is going to pay more to whom for what? Now, maybe the issue is: If the Netflix ISP and my ISP are the same huge company, UGE, that, maybe, also provides on-line movies, then UGE can ask Netflix to pay more or one or the other of the UGE ISPs will throttle the Netflix data. Dirty business. But Netflix is a big boy and could get a different ISP at their end. Then the UGE ISP who serves a consumer could find that the UGE ISP still throttles data from Netflix but not from the UGE movie service? Then the consumer's ISP would be failing to provide the data rate the consumer paid for. Or, maybe, the UGE ISP that serves me might send the movies from the UGE movie service not part of the, say, 101 download speed from my ISP to me and, instead, provide me with, say, 141 Mbps while the UGE movie is playing. This situation would be 'tying', right? Then if Netflix wants to be part of this 141 Mbps to a user who paid for only 101 Mbps, then Netflix has to pay their UGE ISP more; this can work for UGE because they have two ISPs and 'own both ends of the wire'. I can easily accept that a big company with interests at several parts of the Internet and of media more generally may use parts of their business to hurt competition. Such should be stopped. But so far the public discussions seem to describe non-problems.
jon_black 12y ago
Assuming the plan were to be approved, and given that the FCC is an American government organisation, are there any implications for those in other countries? Also, how can an American government organisation consider paid priority on The (global) Internet? Isn't it better to say that "FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet for those who connect to it via a US telecoms provider"?
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Assuming the plan were to be approved, and given that the FCC is an American government organisation, are there any implications for those in other countries? If its approved, then there would be limits -- which do not currently exist -- on what USP based ISPs could do to discriminate between content sources in providing access to consumers. This includes, among others, content sources in foreign countries. So it certainly has implications for foreign content providers, but probably less for foreign consumers. > Also, how can an American government organisation consider paid priority on The (global) Internet? Its not. Its considering limiting what US broadband providers can do.
corford 12y ago
If Comcast gets their way, the FCC will have effectively ended up sanctioning the balkanisation of the US's internet users in to cable company controlled fiefdoms. Each cable company will then assume the role of warlord for their userbase and proceed to dictate the terms and agreements under which their users will experience the internet. All of which guided solely by their desire to maximise profits. If people aren't worried yet, they should be. Serfs didn't enjoy medieval Europe for a reason. The only two viable routes out of this nightmare are: 1. Enshrine net-neutrality / common carrier status in law or 2. Radically break up the US ISP/cable market so that real competition exists. This way Comcast is free to try and milk every teat they can find. If users or content providers don't like the result, Comcast can wither on the vine and die while competitors pick up their fleeing users.
couchand 12y ago
"If a network operator slowed the speed of service below that which the consumer bought, it would be commercially unreasonable and therefore prohibited," Wheeler said. I find this quote very interesting. Currently the trend seems to be that the sticker speed on a connection bears little resemblance to the actual speed. I wonder if he has a plan to change that or if this was just an offhand remark.
thekylemontag 12y ago
G_G america.
shna 12y ago
The mistake will be to allow even a tiny hole in net neutrality. Once they get hold of something it will be only a matter of time to make it larger. However it sounds harmless any dent to net neutrality should be fought against fiercely.
knodi 12y ago
No one I know in the public want this, only ISP. Why the fuck are we even having a commenting period on this fucking knock it down.
pushedx 12y ago
You can't offer bandwidth at a premium, without reducing the bandwidth available to others. That's (physically) how the Internet works. No matter what Wheeler says, there's no way that paid prioritization of traffic can be done fairly.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
isamuel 12y ago
The actual notice of proposed rulemaking (or "NPRM," as ad-law nerds call it): http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-14-61A1.pdf http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-14-61A... I haven't read it in full yet, but I've read the introduction, and the press coverage (surprise!) does not seem quite right to me.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
DigitalSea 12y ago
There is no way in hell this can go ahead. Also, minor nitpick, but this is a rather misleading post. Nobody approved anything, the vote was merely a green light to go ahead with the proposal, nothing has been approved just yet, it's not that easy. Some of my "favourite" takeaways: He stressed consumers would be guaranteed a baseline of service Just like your internet provider says they don't throttle torrent traffic, but a few major ISP's have been caught out doing just that. The same is going to happen if this proposal goes ahead. Unless people breaking the rules are reported, they won't be caught and where will the resources for reporting infringer's come from? Wheeler's proposal is part of a larger "net neutrality" plan that forbids Internet service providers from outright blocking Web sites I have no doubt in my mind, the reform Wheeler is pushing for is merely a door and there are definitely bigger things in store once the flood gates have been opened. The pressure will be too great to close them again. The agency said it had developed a "multifaceted dispute resolution process" on enforcement and would consider appointing an "ombudsman" to oversee the process. The FCC has a shady history of resolving disputes, this is merely hot air to make the reforms not sound so bad. What happens when the resolution process breaks or is overwhelmed and can't cope with the number of infringements taking place? As for a handful of key entities controlling what happens with the pipeline, China is a classic example of what happens when you let a sole entity dictate something like the Internet and even then, the great firewall doesn't stop everything. Then there are questions about conflicts of interest. What happens when say a company like Comcast owns a stake in a company like Netflix and conspire to extort a competitor like Hulu (asking for exorbitant amounts of cash for speed). Who sets the price of these fast lanes and will prices be capped to prevent extortion? Too flawed to work.
- law 12y ago
  > What happens when say a company like Comcast owns a stake in a company like Netflix and conspire to extort a competitor like Hulu (asking for exorbitant amounts of cash for speed). Comcast actually owns part of Hulu, but its a purely economic ownership interest (See https://www.fcc.gov/transaction/comcast-nbcu https://www.fcc.gov/transaction/comcast-nbcu for more information)
mkempe 12y ago
Who amongst the political rulers of the country, apart from Jared Polis and Ted Cruz, is fighting against this? I don't mean populists who make vague promises about net neutrality in order to be elected, then put people in place to undermine their promises -- I mean people who are in a position to fight the FCC, and who are actively doing it.
QuantumChaos 12y ago
If this were a matter of prioritizing traffic on the internet backbone, then I would be in favor. There is nothing wrong with charging congestion fees. However, in this case, we are talking about cable companies, and the bottleneck is presumably the last mile. So what these laws are really doing is enabling cable companies to extract even more monopoly rents, in the form of discriminatory pricing (even though it is the content providers that pay, the pipeline in question is closer to the end user than the content provider, and so if the issue were congestion pricing, and not discriminatory pricing, the charge would be on the end user, who is already paying).
Hypertiger 12y ago
http://hypertiger.blogspot.ca/ http://hypertiger.blogspot.ca/ 911 x 2 = 1822 July 3 or 7x3 =777 Charles Babbage publishes a proposal for a "difference engine", a forerunner of the modern computer for calculating logarithms and trigonometric functions. You all are committing suicide fighting to the death to remain asleep (ignorant of Truth) to continue to enjoy the daydream (cherished delusion) you are awake (knowledgeable of Truth) The Internet is going down at some point it's inevitable. Qubit = YES and NO at the same time or MAYBE Maybe eventually becomes a certainty. That is the certainty of the uncertainty principle. The invisible order or reality of the basic system operating in the background powers the visible chaos or fantasy of the graphical user interface believed to be reality. At the core of the banking algorithm is the compounding interest/exponential growth/take more power than is given...or greed equation. or Ignorance = bliss. Your speculations over the past 2 decades amount to nothing at the logical conclusion of the reasonable assumption. ignorance = bliss deflation = inflation The same as chopping down trees faster than they regrow or causing hyperdeflation...or implosion down to absolute 0 to power hyperinflation up to absolute 1 or bliss. It's all timed by atomic clocks...every second of the fantasy you believe is reality demands exponentially more power than the previous second. It's counting down to the absolute 0 or end point...where the fantasy daydream up to absolute 1 polarity shifts into the nightmare or reality to absolute 0 The enlightenment or illumination turns into the memory wipe of the dark age. You all have had 2 decades to wake up...and all you did was fight to remain asleep. at the 0 or end point you will be forced to wake up from the daydream into the nightmare. There are those on the front lines in the war against deflation...and those sitting in the rear with the gear...goofing off.
D9u 12y ago
The FCC doesn't even agree with ISPs on the definition of what, exactly, constitutes "Broadband" connectivity. Meanwhile the monopoly in my area continues to receive my payments, no matter what they do.
xtx23 12y ago
So why isn't internet an utility?

679 points by jkupferman 12y ago

"Even one of the Democratic commissioners who voted yes on Thursday expressed some misgivings about how the proposal had been handled. "I believe the process that got us to rulemaking today was flawed," she said. "I would have preferred a delay."" --------------------------------- But... she voted yes anyway. WTF?

ColinDabritz 12y ago
For whatever reasons, she must have felt moving forward with a rule was better than not, regardless of the process issues. I may disagree with the decision, but I understand her position.
- Alupis 12y ago
  "I would have done this differently. I would have taken the time to consider the future" Yet she did not consider the future one bit.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> But... she voted yes anyway. WTF? She doesn't think the actual NPRM represents the best way to acheive the objectives it seeks to serve, but agrees with the objectives. As an NPRM isn't an adopted regulations, its a proposal which sets out objectives, provides concrete proposed steps, and seeks public comment on those steps and alternatives to them, it may make sense to vote for an NPRM (especially when you believe that there is a large and active community that will provide alternatives) when you agree with the objectives but have strong disagreements on some elements of the implementation, rather than voting no and preventing any rulemaking directed at the objectives from proceeding. She would prefer to delay and get a better (from her perspective) proposal before the public, but would rather have the process moving forward that will allow adopting rules than have the process stalled. The three that voted for the NPRM are the three commissioners that, differ as they might on the details, believe that the FCC should be pursuing net neutrality ("Open Internet") regulation, the two that voted against are the two that think that the FCC should not and that things like paid prioritization and all the other things net neutrality seeks to restrict should be permitted without restriction. Much of the news coverage has inverted reality and portrayed the proposal as a change to permit paid prioritization, but it is a change (in relevant part) to prevent it, within the constraints imposed by the D.C. Circuit when they struck down the last FCC order intended to do that.

kirualex 12y ago

Yet another blow to Net-Neutrality...

berrypicker 12y ago
I don't see a problem. You can switch ISP if your current one isn't net-neutral. Why should you force businesses to operate in certain way? They're not breaking any laws.
- trurl 12y ago
  Clearly you aren't living in the United States. My choices are Comcast, Comcast, and Comcast. I'm really starting to think mesh networks are going to be the only solution.
  - mariusz79 12y ago
    You forgot about Comcast. :)
  - berrypicker 12y ago
    Are there no smaller, 'independent' ISPs which aren't part of conglomerates that are unlikely to remain net-neutral?
    - trurl 12y ago
      Again, you clearly aren't from around here. To be less facetious, I could also choose AT&T DSL, but they don't offer competitive bandwidth. And they aren't exactly a small independent ISP. There might be ISPs that offer "business class" service, but their prices probably start at least 3x what I currently pay. I'm not even sure they would offer service in an apartment complex either.
    - johnward 12y ago
      Not in most areas of the US.
    - 12y ago

forgotAgain 12y ago

The fix is in. Now what are you going to do about it?

xhrpost 12y ago

So what happened? It seems like just yesterday that the FCC was the one creating the rules around net neutrality. A federal court over-turns this and all of a sudden the FCC decides to go the complete opposite direction?

byuu 12y ago
Tom Wheeler happened. Despite his industry and lobbying connections, he raised a lot of money for Obama's campaign, so he was appointed as the new FCC chairman.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> So what happened? Media misrepresentation happened. > It seems like just yesterday that the FCC was the one creating the rules around net neutrality. It still is. > A federal court over-turns this and all of a sudden the FCC decides to go the complete opposite direction? No, this is an attempt to revive, within the constraints of the court decision, what was struck down. The reporting that this is about "allowing" or "considering" paid prioritization ignores the fact that, as a result of the court decision, paid prioritization is allowed now, without any restrictions. This proposal would declare some paid prioritization (where it is offered exclusively to an affiliate of the ISP) presumptively illegal, and seek to restrict paid prioritization even outside of that which is presumptively illegal. This is in the exact same direction (though not the exact same mechanism, since that was ruled outside of the FCC's authority) as prior net neutrality orders from the FCC, which is why the same 3-2 partisan alignment on the FCC exists on the issue that has existed on net neutrality as a broad concept for quite some time.

altcognito 12y ago

I'm confused by this headline (and a bit by the proceeding). After watching the FCC hearing, it seemed like all of the people who were "for" open internet, and spoke of it from the consumer level (including Wheeler) voted for the proposal. The commissioners that said the FCC didn't have jurisdiction to regulate and to leave the market alone, voted against the proposal. Isn't it the case that if they had voted against this, that we would have been in the exact same boat we are in now and therefore the agreement that Netflix signed would continue unabated? In that case, it really didn't matter what they voted.

opendais 12y ago
The people at the FCC are saying the opposite of what they mean. Yes, we are in the same boat with Netflix having to pay for bandwidth as before. However, by the FCC officially sanctioning something that would have been technically illegal before the Federal ruling, they've basically reversed course and declared open season on content providers the ISPs don't like.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- rayiner 12y ago
  > The people at the FCC are saying the opposite of what they mean. No, net-neutrality proponents are saying the opposite of what they mean. They couch this in terms of "protecting the open internet." Except there never was an "open internet." Before the short-lived net neutrality regulations, cable companies were allowed to do whatever they wanted with their network. And that's true now that the regulations have been struck down. The cable companies do not need any sort of action by the FCC to be able to come to these agreements. What net-neutrality proponents want is new regulations to keep cable companies from doing something that they currently are allowed to do, and except for a small period of time, were historically always allowed to do.
  - opendais 12y ago
    If the government blocks fair competition in a market [through controlling who can provide last mile connections by right of way], they need to provide regulation to enforce fairness on the other end [those that provide last mile connections can't pick and choose whose packets they carry and at what QoS]. There used to be counterweights involved [e.g. Comcast had to play ball fairly] which effectively forced neutrality. Netflix, for instance, wasn't a 'problem' back in 2007 for the ISPs. We didn't have the ISPs pulling QoS BS like this in the 90s because people could and would switch providers. They can't now unless they want to go back to using dialup.

spacefight 12y ago

"What a nice internet connection you have there. It would be a real shame if something happened to it...". So we had a good time, haven't we...

rgumus 12y ago

Well, this is no coincidence. ISPs have been working on this for years.

wavefunction 12y ago
ISPs or telecoms? Telecoms have been working on this for years.
- spacefight 12y ago
  Sometimes, ISPs are both.
  - hgsigala 12y ago
    Well, that's the issue. ISP's are being classified as telecoms.
spacefight 12y ago
No, it's not. But the term "work" implies that someone really did some work and produced something out of value... but these efforts were just the work of money in the pockets of lobbyists and policy makers. What a said day.

dethstar 12y ago

Most important quote since the title is misleading: " The proposal is not a final rule, but the three-to-two vote on Thursday is a significant step forward on a controversial idea that has invited fierce opposition from consumer advocates, Silicon Valley heavyweights, and Democratic lawmakers. "

ozh 12y ago

I hope there will be companies, upon being asked by an ISP to pay more for higher priority in their network, who will tell them to get the f*k off and advocate usage of VPN and anonymisers for their users so they're not identified as US residents.

sinaa 12y ago
And sadly the users would end up on the slow lanes !
wlesieutre 12y ago
Which only works until your VPN provider also refuses to pay up and gets put in the slow lane for having too much traffic.
- deathhand 12y ago
  Business opportunity: Start VPN service and pay for the 'faster lane'. Advertise to users that they won't have throttled anything. ISPs become the utility that they should be.(Although at a higher cost to the end user)
natdempk 12y ago
I would like to see more companies go the way of shaming the ISPs. If people saw a message while a Netflix or Youtube video was buffering that said Comcast slows down this service artificially to make more money, I bet they would care more and would complain.

adamio 12y ago

The internet is slowly being transformed into cable television

spacefight 12y ago
Yes. And certain companies are pushing hard to make them succeed these days. Mozilla is one of them.
- wtetzner 12y ago
  I don't understand this comment. Can you explain?
  - altcognito 12y ago
    DRM
  - jgh 12y ago
    I think it's a reference to the DRM thing from yesterday. Honestly it was more of Mozilla capitulating to the DRM gods, it's not like they're out there pounding the pavement for DRM.
    - spacefight 12y ago
      " Honestly it was more of Mozilla capitulating to the DRM gods, it's not like they're out there pounding the pavement for DRM." What's the difference?
      - jgh 12y ago
        Most people just want the damn thing to work. Studios, whether the EFF and others like it or not, are not going to be changing their stance on DRM any time soon. It seems that more and more media is being consumed on a subscription basis than is being downloaded (see Spotify, Pandora, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu)... People are caring less about owning the content than having access to it. Currently with DRM there are a variety of plugins to support it in the browser. You have to download Widevine's plugin, or PlayReady's plugin, or whatever. It's just a better user experience if we really do need DRM to have some standardized DRM that the browsers can implement to make it seamless for the user. Note that I don't support DRM, I think it's a total waste of time because the movies aren't released to the wild by your average Joe who is downloading movies from Amazon. It just serves to hurt the average user. However I think that if we must have DRM, it should at least be something that is easier and works better for the average user. To answer your question: the difference is that Mozilla is not going out and promoting DRM. They are being pragmatic and reasonable in the less than ideal situation.

devx 12y ago

As an European I probably should be glad about this, since this combined with all the NSA spying issues and implementing backdoors into US products [1], should increasingly force innovation out of US and bring it to Europe, but somehow I'm not. All the ISPs will slow down all the major companies services, unless they pay up. There is no "faster" Internet. It's just "paying to get normal Internet back", like they've already done with Netflix: http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this-hilarious-graph-of-netflix-speeds-shows-the-importance-of-net-neutrality/ http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this-hilarious... [1] - http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-...

buro9 12y ago
Anything the US does they will eventually try and put into a trade agreement and force others to do too. We should never look over the water and be thankful it's not happened to us, because all we're seeing is how our (near) future is likely to be.
kanwisher 12y ago
More likely isps in other countries will look to this and decide they can make more money there. I think some Australian ips still have low gigabyte caps per month

ColinDabritz 12y ago

"And he promised a series of measures to ensure the new paid prioritization practices are done fairly and don't harm consumers." I have a measure in mind that won't harm consumers. Don't allow ISPs to discriminate against users regarding their already paid for internet traffic based on what they request. (Gee that sounds a lot like net neutrality.) Anything less is open for abuse. Perhaps "Discrimination" is a good word to tar this with, because it is. It's discrimination against companies, but it's also discrimination against users based on their tastes, preferences, and possibly socioeconomic status. To say nothing of de-facto censorship issues.

natdempk 12y ago
This seems like a valuable approach. If we could come up with examples of services like nonprofits that would be unable to pay and have their services negatively affected I think that could make people care about this issue. Maybe if we focused on things like Khan Academy, where their content is largely video. I think in that case its clear their money would be better spent developing a larger knowledge base instead of paying extortion money to ISPs, and it might strike a chord with average users.
- rayiner 12y ago
  I think if people would get away from this nebulous message that mostly seems to benefit for-profit companies, and focus on issues like ensuring access for non-profits and educational organizations, that there would be a lot more bi-partisan traction. Right now, the optics, for those not invested in the issue, come across as being mostly about Comcast and Netflix bickering over profits.
  - adventured 12y ago
    If you focus the issue on non-profits and edu orgs, all the people trying to get this through will do is write a tiny little exclusion just for that concern (ie no slow lanes for non-profits). That's what they do every time there's a narrow concern raised against terrible legislation. It'll backfire big time, and waste valuable time.

JimmaDaRustla 12y ago

There should be a fast lane, it should also be the only lane.

hpaavola 12y ago

I don't get this whole net neautrality discussion that is going on in US (and maybe somewhere else, just haven't paid attention). Consumers pay based on speed of their connection. If ISP feels like the consumers are not paying enough, raise the prices. Service providers (not ISPs, but the ones who run servers that consumers connect to) pay based on speed of their connection. If the ISP feels like service providers are not paying enough, raise the prices. Why in the earth there is a need for slow/fast lanes and data caps? I'm four years old. So please keep that in mind when explaing this to me. :)

pavel_lishin 12y ago
> I'm four years old. I feel like this isn't quite right.
- masklinn 12y ago
  I'm guessing it's a reference to ELI5.
masklinn 12y ago
> Why in the earth there is a need for slow/fast lanes Because once the middleman has established himself as a monopoly and everybody has to go through him with no alternative, he can make bank by having everybody pay more. > and data caps? Lets the ISP oversubscribe even more and extract even more money out of the system without providing any additional value whatsoever.
grandalf 12y ago
> Why in the earth there is a need for slow/fast lanes and data caps? It's just an alternate way of pricing the service. You could ask similar questions about a lot of industries: - Why does Github charge the way it does and not just price the service per megabyte of data stored or per commit, etc? - Why do fast food restaurants offer free soft drink refills for $0.99 but not offer a single fill for $0.50? - Why do residential bandwidth providers not offer a service with guaranteed gamer-quality low latency? - Why do restaurants not offer a discount for customers who decline the free bread and water?

dragonwriter 12y ago

Its not a plan to allow paid priority on the Internet -- that's already allowed without any restriction since the old Open Internet order was struck down by the D.C. Circuit. Its a plan to, within the limits placed by the court order striking down the old plan, limit practices that violate the neutrality principles the FCC has articulated as part of its Open Internet efforts, including paid prioritization.

markcampbell 12y ago

Just making it easier for other countries. Shoot yourself in the foot, USA!

jqm 12y ago

People having the freedom to look at whatever they choose on a level playing field may not be in the interests of all concerned. The consolidation of media companies possibly served interests other than profits. Look at what Putin is allegedly doing with the internet. Maybe in a way the eventual intent of this is the same. And for the same purposes. I don't think we should let it get started just in case.

DevX101 12y ago

> approved in a three-to-two vote along party lines, Why the fuck are there party lines in the FCC? Or any other regulatory body for that matter?

Havoc 12y ago
For the same reason US politics in general are such a disaster...money driven lobbying.
stvn 12y ago
same reason there's party lines inherent in the verdict-deciders of the highest court in the land (blind justice). or in counties/cities where sheriffs are publicly-voted for (to serve and protect). political collusion -- sorry, persuasion -- is the dna of gov't office.
hgsigala 12y ago
The administration gets to nominate commissioners. The Senate confirms them. These are partisan bodies. The commissioners themselves have theories that fit into party politics as well.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Why the fuck are there party lines in the FCC? Or any other regulatory body for that matter? Because regulators aren't angels that descend from heaven, but people peforming a political function, appointed and confirmed by elected politicians. Or, more succinctly, because representative democracy.
- shmerl 12y ago
  I think the question was not why there are members of different parties in the FCC, but why do they differ in this vote based on partisan membership? I.e. why would one party find these rules good while the other not? It's as if one likes net neutrality, while the other doesn't.

kenrikm 12y ago

Great! the FCC has officially sanctioned ISP's to be Trolls, demanding some gold to cross their bridge. This guarantees that there will always be multiple levels of peering speed even if the connections are upgraded and are able to easily handle the load. They won't want to give up their troll gold. That's just peachy, thanks for letting us get screwed over even more, Go USA! </Sarcasm>

dragonwriter 12y ago
> the FCC has officially sanctioned ISP's to be Trolls, demanding some gold to cross their bridge. No, the DC Circuit did that when it struck down the FCC's old Open Internet order. The FCC has proposed a draft plan to limit harassment by the trolls, and asked the public for comments on how to make it better before "official sanction" is given to any rule.

lazyloop 12y ago

And now Comcast is planning data limits for all customers, what conincidence. http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/15/technology/comcast-data-limits/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/15/technology/comcast-data-limi...

EvanAnderson 12y ago
Metered service is, ultimately, what they want. They are envious of the kinds of margin wireless carriers are getting for data transfer over their networks.

joelhaus 12y ago

Can anyone make a serious argument on behalf of the carriers? Given the court decisions, the only way to protect the American people and the economy is to reclassify ISP's under Title II. For the skeptics, it appears to come down to the question: which route offers better prospects for upgrading our internet infrastructure? Choice one is relying on a for-profit corporation with an effective monopoly that is beholden to shareholders; Choice two is relying on elected politicians beholden to the voters. If you think there is a different argument that can be made on behalf of the carriers or if you can make the above one better, I would be very interested in hearing it.

JoshTriplett 12y ago
> Can anyone make a serious argument on behalf of the carriers? Given the court decisions, the only way to protect the American people and the economy is to reclassify ISP's under Title II. If you ignore the various arguments about ISPs trying to get paid twice for the same content, consider the possibility of an ISP and a major high-bandwidth content provider (YouTube, Netflix, Akamai, etc) trying to build a deal that's better for both of them and for the consumer. For instance, consider a CDN on the ISP's network. Consumers get content faster with lower latency; the content provider reduces their bandwidth costs by sending only one copy of $POPULAR_CONTENT rather than one per customer; the ISP has lower costs and makes its customers happier. Network neutrality would ban that, too. So this isn't the kind of thing that can be settled with simple blanket statements like "carriers should not make deals with content providers" or "all content should be treated identically". > For the skeptics, it appears to come down to the question: which route offers better prospects for upgrading our internet infrastructure? Choice one is relying on a for-profit corporation with an effective monopoly that is beholden to shareholders; Choice two is relying on elected politicians beholden to the voters. I'm always impressed when people can say with a straight face that politicians listen to voters. Voters don't care about issues like these, unless you can divide the issue across party lines and successfully make it one of the very small number of visible issues in a political campaign. I'd be more interested in seeing proposed solutions to the "effective monopoly" problem than to network neutrality. Solve the monopoly and issues like network neutrality will disappear along with it.

ryanhuff 12y ago

The investment in Obama by tech luminaries must be a huge disappointment.

seanieb 12y ago
Obama proclaiming his "commitment to net neutrality" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-mW1qccn8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-mW1qccn8k Tom Wheeler, the FCC Chairman, was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the majority Democratic U.S. Senate in 2013 (lead by Harry Reid who also claims to be pro net neutrality) is going to kill Net Neutrality. Please take some time to remind democratic politicians & supporters why practicing this sort of politics will come with a price.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Tom Wheeler, the FCC Chairman, was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the majority Democratic U.S. Senate in 2013 (lead by Harry Reid who also claims to be pro net neutrality) is going to kill Net Neutrality. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit already killed net neutrality. Wheeler is trying to resurrect it within the limits set by the Court (if you want more than that Court will allow under current statutory authority, you need to get more net neutrality friendly people in Congress so that they can change the statute to give the FCC more authority with regard to net neutrality.)
- jblow 12y ago
  He also promised to close Guantanamo.

rsync 12y ago

peak internet: http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2010/12/peak-internet.html http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2010/12/peak-internet.h...

trurl 12y ago

We truly have the best government money can buy.

phkahler 12y ago

Who nominated this former lobbyist for the FCC spot? And who voiced/voted their approval? Voters should know.

todayiamme 12y ago

In my mind one of the key questions to ask in this debate is, if the eventual rise of a more closely controlled internet destroys this frontier, what's next? Right now thanks to a close confluence of remarkable factors, the barriers associated with starting something are almost negligible. The steady march of Moore's law combined with visualisation has given us servers that cost fractions of a penny to lease per hour. No one has had to beg or pay middlemen to use that server and reach customers around the world. At the other end, customers can finally view these bits, often streamed wirelessly, on magical slabs of glass and metal in their hand or what would have passed for a super-computer in a bygone age... All of this combined with a myriad of other factors has allowed anyone to start a billion dollar company. If this very fragile ecosystem is damaged and it dies out, where should someone ambitious go next to strike out on their own?

ep103 12y ago
They won't, this is how you kill a sector of the economy. Hopefully it won't come to that, but then again, that's why this is important.

coreymgilmore 12y ago

Simply put, this is absolutely terrible. How are start ups and small business web companies supposed to compete when their reach to consumers will automatically be slowed compared to larger competitors who pay for faster pipes? And who is to govern the rates (and tiers) of faster speeds? I can only assume ISPs will determine a cost based on aggregate bandwidth. But who is to say there can't be a fast lane, a faster lane, and a fastest lane? Sounds anti competitive to me (even the big name companies are against this!). Last: "The telecom companies argue that without being able to charge tech firms for higher-speed connections, they will be unable to invest in faster connections for consumers" > Google Fiber is cheaper for one. Seconds, the telecom giants have all increased subscriptions so there is more money there. And, as time goes along shouldn't these providers become more efficient and costs should decrease anyway? Must be nice to have a sudo-monopoly in some markets.

mariusz79 12y ago

It really is time to decentralize and move forward with mesh networking.

ep103 12y ago
What really are the issues involved? Just ensuring data integrity between the end client and the originating server?
Omniusaspirer 12y ago
Can you point me towards what I can do right now to move towards this? I already maintain an open guest network but I presume there's more I could be doing.

sinak 12y ago

The title and post are both quite misleading. The commissioners didn't approve Tom Wheeler's plan (to regulate the Internet under Section 706), but voted to go ahead with the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and commenting period. Tom Wheeler stated multiple times that Title II classification is still on the table. There'll now be a 120 day commenting period; 60 days of comments from companies and the public, and then 60 days of replies to those comments from the same. After that, the final rulemaking will happen. It's likely that the docket number for comments will continue to be 14-28, so if you want to ask the FCC to apply common carrier rules to the Internet under Title II, you can do so here: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display?z=r8e2h http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display?z=r8e2h and you can view previous comments here: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment_search/execute?proceeding=14-28 http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment_search/execute?proceeding=1... It's probably best to wait until the actual text of the NPRM is made public though, which'll likely happen very soon. Edit: WaPo have now updated the title of the article to make it more accurate: "FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet." Old title was "FCC approves plan to allow for paid priority on Internet."

worace 12y ago
Adding to the confusion, the NYT has an article up right now which seems to report the opposite. To quote from the NYT article lede: "WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 on Thursday to invite public comment on a set of proposed rules aimed at guaranteeing an open Internet, prohibiting high-speed Internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against legal content flowing through their pipes. " Am I reading this wrong or does that seem to say the opposite of what WaPo is saying?
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  You are reading it correctly. And the NYT seems to be reporting it correctly. While the text is not published yet anywhere I can see, the FCC fact sheet states that the proposal (direct quotes with only formatting/presentation changes) [1]: - Proposes to retain the definitions and scope of the 2010 rules, which governed broadband Internet access service providers, but not services like enterprise services, Internet traffic exchange and specialized services. - Proposes to enhance the existing transparency rule, which was upheld by the D.C. Circuit. The proposed enhancements would provide consumers, edge providers, and the Commission with tailored disclosures, including information on the nature of congestion that impacts consumers’ use of online services and timely notice of new practices. - As part of the revived "no-blocking" rule, proposes ensuring that all who use the Internet can enjoy robust, fast and dynamic Internet access. - Tentatively concludes that priority service offered exclusively by a broadband provider to an affiliate should be considered illegal until proven otherwise. - Asks how to devise a rigorous, multi-factor "screen" to analyze whether any conduct hurts consumers, competition, free expression and civic engagement, and other criteria under a legal standard termed "commercial reasonableness." - Asks a series of detailed questions about what legal authority provides the most effective means of keeping the Internet open: Section 706 or Title II. - Proposes a multi-faceted process to promptly resolve and head off disputes, including an ombudsperson to act as a watchdog on behalf of consumers and start-ups and small businesses. http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2014/db0515/DOC-327104A1.pdf http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2014...

hgsigala 12y ago

At this point everyone is officially invited to comment on the proposal. In around 60 days, the FCC will respond to your comments and redraft a proposal. Please comment! http://www.fcc.gov/comments http://www.fcc.gov/comments

Alupis 12y ago

Wait a minute! You mean my ever-increasing ISP fees at my home are not for the ISP to build a better network? You mean to tell me the ISP is now going to charge content providers for the ability to provide me with content that I'm already paying my ISP to deliver? You mean to tell me my content providers are now going to likely increase their fees to cope with this "fast lane"? This sounds an awful lot like extortion, and double billing. ISP's... you have one (1) job. Deliver packets.

Orthanc 12y ago

This doesn't sound good: "6. Enhance competition. The Commission will look for opportunities to enhance Internet access competition. One obvious candidate for close examination was raised in Judge Silberman’s separate opinion, namely legal restrictions on the ability of cities and towns to offer broadband services to consumers in their communities." http://www.fcc.gov/document/statement-fcc-chairman-tom-wheeler-fccs-open-internet-rules http://www.fcc.gov/document/statement-fcc-chairman-tom-wheel...

gergles 12y ago
The FCC wants to override state laws banning municipal competition. This is one thing they have right.

wielebny 12y ago

If that would pass - wouldn't be this a great opportunity for european hosting companies to seize the hosting market?

wpietri 12y ago
Probably not. Installing last-mile infrastructure is expensive. I understand that it's also often political; early cable TV installations were often local monopolies granted by local governments. Even if they tried, the incumbent ISPs can afford to underprice their services to make it uneconomical for competitors. E.g., they might lower prices drastically in competitive areas, and raise them in uncompetitive ones.

shmerl 12y ago

I don't really understand why it's divided by partisan membership.

Lewisham 12y ago

After weeks of public outcry over the proposal, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said the agency would not allow for unfair, or "commercially unreasonable," business practices. He wouldn't accept, for instance, practices that leave a consumer with slower downloads of some Web sites than what the consumer paid for from their Internet service provider. Because they've done such a bang-up job of that thus far..? It's no secret that at comparable advertised speed, Netflix on Comcast was far worse than Netflix on other ISPs. I'm not sure if they're really so deluded to think their enforcement is super great, or if they're just delivering placating sound bites.

mc_hammer 12y ago

anywhere that the internet can be routed via paid priority is the spot where the snooping can be installed.

rjohnk 12y ago

I know all the basic ins and outs of bandwidth. But why is this so complicated? I pay x amount for access to the Internet at x speed. I use internet. I pay the access fee.

carsonreinke 12y ago

Maybe I am missing something, but what is the argument ISPs have for this?

seanieb 12y ago
They are a very large contributor to Democratic politicians.
- couchand 12y ago
  To be clear, the Democrat appointees are the ones pushing for a return to net neutrality.
  - seanieb 12y ago
    Factually acurate. And what do Obama & Congressional and Senate Democrats have to say about it? at most feigning some concern, but ultimately doing nothing. They don't care net neutrality, having somewhat plausible deniable and making Comcast, at&t et al happy is a win win for them. Do you really think the FCC chairman would do this or be able to do this against Obamas wishes?
jsz0 12y ago
Residential Internet access is almost universally sold as a 'best effort' class of service. There is no guarantee of availably or speeds outside of the provider's network.

markbnj 12y ago

This portion of the piece is interesting to me: "He wouldn't accept, for instance, practices that leave a consumer with slower downloads of some Web sites than what the consumer paid for from their Internet service provider." Definitions are tricky, but since we all pay for more bandwidth from our ISPs than we utilize from any one site (or almost all of us, I think), sticking to this rule would mean ISPs would not have the power to throttle individual data sources. Is that not a correct interpretation?

zacinbusiness 12y ago

I don't understand the ISP's point of view on this issue. Please correct me if I'm wrong. But it seems that ISPs are saying "Hey, we offer this great service. But bandwidth hungry applications like Netflix are just using too much data. And we need to throttle their data usage, or they need to pay us more money." The ISPs, then, are claiming to be victims. When in reality they simply promise services that they can't cost-effectively deliver. If I make contracts to give all of you a new pair of shoes every month. And you pay in advance. And then I run out of shoes before I can deliver on my promise...doesn't that mean that I don't know how to effectively run my business? Isn't that my fault for promising a service that I can't provide? Why would anyone feel sorry for me?

graycat 12y ago

Okay, from all the public discussion so far, NYT, WaPo, various fora, etc., I totally fail to 'get it'. Maybe I know too much or too little; likely a mixture of both. Help! More details anyone? To be more clear, let's consider: I pay my ISP, a cable TV company, so much a month for Internet service with speeds -- Mbps, million bits per second -- as stated in the service, maybe 25 Mbps upload (from me to the Internet) speed and 101 Mbps download speed. Now those speeds are just between my computer and my ISP. So, if I watch a video clip from some server in Romania, maybe I only get 2 Mbps for that video clip because that is all my ISP is getting from the server in Romania. And I am paying nothing per bit moved. So, if I watch 10 movies a day at 4 billion bytes per movie, even then I don't pay more. Now, to get the bits they send me, my ISP gets those from some connection(s) to the 'Internet backbone' or some 'points of presence' (PoP) or some such at various backbone 'tiers', 'peering centers', etc. Now, long common in such digital communications have been 'quality of service' (QoS) and 'class of service' (CoS). QoS can have to do with latency (how long have to wait until the first packet arrives?), 'jitter' (the time between packets varies significantly?), dropped packets (TCP notices and requests retransmission), out of order packets (to be straightened out by the TCP logic or just handled by TCP requesting retransmission), etc. Heck, maybe with low QoS some packets come with coffee stains from a pass by the NSA or some such! And CoS might mean, if a router gets too busy (the way the Internet is designed, that can happen), then some packets from a lower 'class' of service can be dropped. But my not very good understanding is that QoS and CoS, etc., don't much apply between my computer and my ISP and, really, apply mostly just to various parts of the 'Internet backbone' where the really big data rates are. And there my understanding is that QoS and CoS are essentially fixed and not adjusted just for me or Netflix, etc. E.g., once one of the packets headed for me gets on a wavelength on a long haul optical fiber, that packet will move just like many millions of others, that is, with full 'network neutrality'. So, I ask for some packets from a server at Netflix, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Vimeo, WaPo, NYT, HN, Microsoft's MSDN, etc. Then that server connects to essentially an ISP but with likely a connection to the Internet at 1, 10, 40, 100 Gbps (billion bits per second). And, really, my packets may come from Amazon Web Services (AWS), CloudFlare, Akamai, some colocation facility by Level3 or some such; e.g., the ads may come from some ad server quite far from where the data I personally was interested in came from. Note: I'm building a Web site, and my local colocation facility says that they can provide me with dual Ethernet connections to the Internet at 10 Gbps per connection. Note: Apparently roughly at present it is common commercial practice to have one cable with maybe 144 optical fibers each with a few dozen wavelengths of laser light (dense wavelength division multiplexing -- DWDM) with data rate of 40 or 100 Gbps per wavelength. So, there is me, a little guy, getting the packets for, say, a Web page. Various servers send the packets, they rattle around in various tiers of the Internet backbone, treated in the backbone like any other packets, arrive at my ISP, and are sent to me over coax to my neighborhood and to me. So, with this setup, just where could, say, Netflix be asked to pay more and for what? That is, Netflix is already paying their ISP. That ISP dumps the Netflix packets on the Internet backbone, and millions of consumer ISPs get the packets. My ISP is just a local guy; tough to believe that Netflix will pay them. Besides, there is no need for Netflix to pay my ISP since my ISP is already doing what they say, that is, as I can confirm with Web site http://www.speedtest.net http://www.speedtest.net I'm getting the speeds I paid my ISP for. Netflix is going to pay more to whom for what? Now, maybe the issue is: If the Netflix ISP and my ISP are the same huge company, UGE, that, maybe, also provides on-line movies, then UGE can ask Netflix to pay more or one or the other of the UGE ISPs will throttle the Netflix data. Dirty business. But Netflix is a big boy and could get a different ISP at their end. Then the UGE ISP who serves a consumer could find that the UGE ISP still throttles data from Netflix but not from the UGE movie service? Then the consumer's ISP would be failing to provide the data rate the consumer paid for. Or, maybe, the UGE ISP that serves me might send the movies from the UGE movie service not part of the, say, 101 download speed from my ISP to me and, instead, provide me with, say, 141 Mbps while the UGE movie is playing. This situation would be 'tying', right? Then if Netflix wants to be part of this 141 Mbps to a user who paid for only 101 Mbps, then Netflix has to pay their UGE ISP more; this can work for UGE because they have two ISPs and 'own both ends of the wire'. I can easily accept that a big company with interests at several parts of the Internet and of media more generally may use parts of their business to hurt competition. Such should be stopped. But so far the public discussions seem to describe non-problems.

jon_black 12y ago

Assuming the plan were to be approved, and given that the FCC is an American government organisation, are there any implications for those in other countries? Also, how can an American government organisation consider paid priority on The (global) Internet? Isn't it better to say that "FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet for those who connect to it via a US telecoms provider"?

dragonwriter 12y ago
> Assuming the plan were to be approved, and given that the FCC is an American government organisation, are there any implications for those in other countries? If its approved, then there would be limits -- which do not currently exist -- on what USP based ISPs could do to discriminate between content sources in providing access to consumers. This includes, among others, content sources in foreign countries. So it certainly has implications for foreign content providers, but probably less for foreign consumers. > Also, how can an American government organisation consider paid priority on The (global) Internet? Its not. Its considering limiting what US broadband providers can do.

corford 12y ago

If Comcast gets their way, the FCC will have effectively ended up sanctioning the balkanisation of the US's internet users in to cable company controlled fiefdoms. Each cable company will then assume the role of warlord for their userbase and proceed to dictate the terms and agreements under which their users will experience the internet. All of which guided solely by their desire to maximise profits. If people aren't worried yet, they should be. Serfs didn't enjoy medieval Europe for a reason. The only two viable routes out of this nightmare are: 1. Enshrine net-neutrality / common carrier status in law or 2. Radically break up the US ISP/cable market so that real competition exists. This way Comcast is free to try and milk every teat they can find. If users or content providers don't like the result, Comcast can wither on the vine and die while competitors pick up their fleeing users.

couchand 12y ago

"If a network operator slowed the speed of service below that which the consumer bought, it would be commercially unreasonable and therefore prohibited," Wheeler said. I find this quote very interesting. Currently the trend seems to be that the sticker speed on a connection bears little resemblance to the actual speed. I wonder if he has a plan to change that or if this was just an offhand remark.

thekylemontag 12y ago

G_G america.

shna 12y ago

The mistake will be to allow even a tiny hole in net neutrality. Once they get hold of something it will be only a matter of time to make it larger. However it sounds harmless any dent to net neutrality should be fought against fiercely.

knodi 12y ago

No one I know in the public want this, only ISP. Why the fuck are we even having a commenting period on this fucking knock it down.

pushedx 12y ago

You can't offer bandwidth at a premium, without reducing the bandwidth available to others. That's (physically) how the Internet works. No matter what Wheeler says, there's no way that paid prioritization of traffic can be done fairly.

deleted 12y ago

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isamuel 12y ago

The actual notice of proposed rulemaking (or "NPRM," as ad-law nerds call it): http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-14-61A1.pdf http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-14-61A... I haven't read it in full yet, but I've read the introduction, and the press coverage (surprise!) does not seem quite right to me.

deleted 12y ago

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DigitalSea 12y ago

There is no way in hell this can go ahead. Also, minor nitpick, but this is a rather misleading post. Nobody approved anything, the vote was merely a green light to go ahead with the proposal, nothing has been approved just yet, it's not that easy. Some of my "favourite" takeaways: He stressed consumers would be guaranteed a baseline of service Just like your internet provider says they don't throttle torrent traffic, but a few major ISP's have been caught out doing just that. The same is going to happen if this proposal goes ahead. Unless people breaking the rules are reported, they won't be caught and where will the resources for reporting infringer's come from? Wheeler's proposal is part of a larger "net neutrality" plan that forbids Internet service providers from outright blocking Web sites I have no doubt in my mind, the reform Wheeler is pushing for is merely a door and there are definitely bigger things in store once the flood gates have been opened. The pressure will be too great to close them again. The agency said it had developed a "multifaceted dispute resolution process" on enforcement and would consider appointing an "ombudsman" to oversee the process. The FCC has a shady history of resolving disputes, this is merely hot air to make the reforms not sound so bad. What happens when the resolution process breaks or is overwhelmed and can't cope with the number of infringements taking place? As for a handful of key entities controlling what happens with the pipeline, China is a classic example of what happens when you let a sole entity dictate something like the Internet and even then, the great firewall doesn't stop everything. Then there are questions about conflicts of interest. What happens when say a company like Comcast owns a stake in a company like Netflix and conspire to extort a competitor like Hulu (asking for exorbitant amounts of cash for speed). Who sets the price of these fast lanes and will prices be capped to prevent extortion? Too flawed to work.

law 12y ago
> What happens when say a company like Comcast owns a stake in a company like Netflix and conspire to extort a competitor like Hulu (asking for exorbitant amounts of cash for speed). Comcast actually owns part of Hulu, but its a purely economic ownership interest (See https://www.fcc.gov/transaction/comcast-nbcu https://www.fcc.gov/transaction/comcast-nbcu for more information)

mkempe 12y ago

Who amongst the political rulers of the country, apart from Jared Polis and Ted Cruz, is fighting against this? I don't mean populists who make vague promises about net neutrality in order to be elected, then put people in place to undermine their promises -- I mean people who are in a position to fight the FCC, and who are actively doing it.

QuantumChaos 12y ago

If this were a matter of prioritizing traffic on the internet backbone, then I would be in favor. There is nothing wrong with charging congestion fees. However, in this case, we are talking about cable companies, and the bottleneck is presumably the last mile. So what these laws are really doing is enabling cable companies to extract even more monopoly rents, in the form of discriminatory pricing (even though it is the content providers that pay, the pipeline in question is closer to the end user than the content provider, and so if the issue were congestion pricing, and not discriminatory pricing, the charge would be on the end user, who is already paying).

Hypertiger 12y ago

http://hypertiger.blogspot.ca/ http://hypertiger.blogspot.ca/ 911 x 2 = 1822 July 3 or 7x3 =777 Charles Babbage publishes a proposal for a "difference engine", a forerunner of the modern computer for calculating logarithms and trigonometric functions. You all are committing suicide fighting to the death to remain asleep (ignorant of Truth) to continue to enjoy the daydream (cherished delusion) you are awake (knowledgeable of Truth) The Internet is going down at some point it's inevitable. Qubit = YES and NO at the same time or MAYBE Maybe eventually becomes a certainty. That is the certainty of the uncertainty principle. The invisible order or reality of the basic system operating in the background powers the visible chaos or fantasy of the graphical user interface believed to be reality. At the core of the banking algorithm is the compounding interest/exponential growth/take more power than is given...or greed equation. or Ignorance = bliss. Your speculations over the past 2 decades amount to nothing at the logical conclusion of the reasonable assumption. ignorance = bliss deflation = inflation The same as chopping down trees faster than they regrow or causing hyperdeflation...or implosion down to absolute 0 to power hyperinflation up to absolute 1 or bliss. It's all timed by atomic clocks...every second of the fantasy you believe is reality demands exponentially more power than the previous second. It's counting down to the absolute 0 or end point...where the fantasy daydream up to absolute 1 polarity shifts into the nightmare or reality to absolute 0 The enlightenment or illumination turns into the memory wipe of the dark age. You all have had 2 decades to wake up...and all you did was fight to remain asleep. at the 0 or end point you will be forced to wake up from the daydream into the nightmare. There are those on the front lines in the war against deflation...and those sitting in the rear with the gear...goofing off.

D9u 12y ago

The FCC doesn't even agree with ISPs on the definition of what, exactly, constitutes "Broadband" connectivity. Meanwhile the monopoly in my area continues to receive my payments, no matter what they do.

xtx23 12y ago

So why isn't internet an utility?