U.S. law fundamentally rests on the idea of checks and balances and a division of power so that no one person or body can easily enact or execute laws that are against the interests of the people. The legislative branch enacts laws, the executive branch laws executes them, and the judicial branch interprets them.
In the modern era, when a law requires complex administration, its enactment by the legislative branch does not end the process of defining what the law will be and how it will function. For any complex area, an administrative body is set up to implement and administer the law in its details. That means appointing bureaucrats who take the broad mandate of the law and give it life by applying it to the countless details that actually affect people's lives. So, the tax laws specify broad enactments saying that people must pay income taxes, estate taxes, excise taxes, etc. But the IRS exists to give those laws life and to promulgate a mountain of regulations that tell us when this is that item constitutes an item of income or a deductible expense or an exemption from this or that, etc., etc. Of course, under the way that U.S. law works, any such agency must be given full authority to exercise discretion to give reasonable interpretations to whatever legislative enactments set up the statutory authority under which it functions. At the same time, the power of the agency is strictly limited to working within that statutory authority. Within its bounds, the agency has vast powers; outside its bounds, it can do nothing.
Thus, the essence of administrative law is the idea of reasonable discretion to promulgate and enforce regulations to see that the law's underlying purposes are fulfilled. The power of the bureaucrats who make such regulations is enormous, as long as they stay within their bounds. And courts routinely accept this. So long as the regulations adopted by the bureaucrats are deemed to be within their bounds, and not deemed to be acting arbitrarily or capriciously or without rational basis, the courts defer to the bureaucratic judgment and uphold whatever they do.
And so we now have the FCC of "we will censor this and that" and of "we will revoke your license for this or that" fame being entrusted with broad powers to regulate the internet, powers that could be legally used to do all sorts of things deemed abhorrent and restrictive of freedom but as to which the agency assures us it will use voluntary restraint in exercising.
This, I believe, is hardly a sure foundation upon which to base a long-term hope of assuring a free and open internet.
I do believe, given the political climate, that it will be a short-term solution for guaranteeing "net neutrality," whatever that means exactly.
But, in our federal system, amid the various ways the idea of net neutrality might have been won and protected, the worst imaginable way from a conceptual standpoint is to say that internet freedom can best be guaranteed by giving broad discretionary power to bureaucrats to do what they will within the nebulous confines of a communications act enacted 80 years ago that did not even contemplate modern technology as we now know it. This is the very act that has been most characterized for decades now by an orgy of lobbying by one competitive group or interest or another to gain this or that advantage over others and whose crowning glory appears to rest in a mountain of endless litigation over what this or that may mean in the act.
I have purposely framed the above comments with multiple "this or that" references because that is the whole idea behind a nebulous bureaucratic framework: it can morph and shift in ways scarcely imaginable as time passes, as vested interests mount campaigns for their pet issues, and things get carved up by insiders with the nominal aim of protecting consumers but with the normal goal of carving up the booty for those who have the biggest stakes in the process.
Even in this thread (and many others like it), we already see vigorous debates over the meaning of this or that interpretation and of the motives behind them. This is all deemed safe for the moment because it is discussing an issue over which people are passionate, an issue which is right before us, and an issue over which each of us believes we have sound reasoning that ought to be adopted in the current debate.
But take that same process, extend it to a whole range of issues that the FCC might now address, add to the mix the vigorous energies of everybody and his uncle who has a stake in getting this or that competitive advantage on the issue, and then toss it to the courts to sort out who is right, well, you then have a lethal brew that in my view leaves us vulnerable to future abuse that is hardly trivial but affects the very essence of how a free and open internet ought to function.
Remember, you always believe the "good guys" will be in charge. But give enough unrestricted power to any governmental agency with very few checks on that power and the "bad guys" may then run wild with what you have done, much to your chagrin.
I realize this is a very unpopular position in this forum. But it has to be said. I truly hope I am wrong in my concerns.
So are you OK with Comcast dropping all of my packets from Netflix? If you're not, then how can we go about setting up a system where they can't do that?
Verizon sued and won when the FCC issued the 2010 Open Internet rules. The court said the FCC couldn't mandate these rules without a reclassification to Title II. So the FCC reclassified ISPs to Title II and then basically said the same thing. ISPs cannot block or bias traffic, and they have to open about their operations.
How do we go about stopping ISPs from blocking or biasing without Title II reclassification? What's your solution?
The alternative is that your only last-mile private broadband provider is in complete control of your link to the internet, and you can't even begin to have a say in how the link is managed...
Markets with multiple private competitors end up the most efficient, but when you exclude a government based solution, what do we do about critical markets without competition?
Very few places in the US have "only" one last-mile provider. Most have 2 or more wired, and 3 or more wireless options. (The wireless isn't usually cost-competitive for bulk HD video yet... but will get there in another 5-10 years.)
Running new wires is also always possible. It'll be even easier now, with a richer society and new automation, and municipalities less likely to offer monopoly franchises, than the cable deployments of the 60s-80s.
Bits are bits, and the ways to deliver them to any point on the planet keep growing. Any brief advantage one medium or company may have – such as cable & Comcast at this precise moment – can disappear quickly. And will disappear even faster if they try to abuse their power, providing an easy motivational/marketing/profitability hook for competitive alternatives.
Huh? Wireless isn't a legit broadband solution, and 2+ wired situations are very rare for residential service.
Large swaths of the remote state of New York are in precisely this circumstance. Verizon has essentially abandoned POTS, and many places cannot provision new DSL service, or can only receive very low speed DSL. Outside of the FIOS footprint, the cable company is it. In some cases, you can subscribe to an unbundled cable offering and get 10/1 EarthLink cable service for $4 less than 25/2 Time Warner.
Why isn't wireless 'legit'? Monkeybrains is wiring up much of San Francisco with service that's ~300Mbps (6X Comcast's best) for $35/month. My T-Mobile LTE gets 20-45Mbps throughout my apartment. Yes, it's more expensive – as I'd mentioned, not yet cost-competitive for lots of HD video watching. But it's good for everything else, and getting better.
Almost everywhere has both cable and DSL options – that is, two providers, not "only" one. Some places have more than one cable option – including my previous SF address. And more wires can be run: for example Google Fiber, or even actual Ethernet cabling.
By all means, add new options to areas with limited choices! Use antitrust, or have localities take steps tuned to their needs. But forcing a unified, commodity-like national regulated-service model on the whole industry doesn't run any new wires or add any consumer options... it only adds constraints & compliance costs for potential new entrants.
Rural areas are completely different from large metropolitan areas like San Francisco in this respect and vast chunks of the US have only one provider for the last mile creating de-facto monopolies. The money isn't there to keep multiple sets of infrastructure going which in turn leads to exorbitant pricing for the customers of the one remaining option. And due to the distances involved and lack of 3G/4G coverage in those areas the other obvious option is usually also in short supply.
In my experience, rural (but still populated) areas have great wireless coverage in the US – the networks have plenty of places to put their towers, and the service is uncongested. Wired service is more hit-or-miss.
Still, if the problem were in fact limited rural options, for the minority of citizens who live in rural areas, the fix would be new options for them, or regulations of their monppoly provider – not new federal rules and discretionary oversight for every ISP, including those in urban areas with vigorous competition.
TLDR: The Federal government via the FCC just nationalized the internet using the red-herring of "net-neutrality". Such wide regulatory power over the communications system crucial to a free society is ripe for abuse by a future dictator.
Its not any specific rule or action at this time. It is the power to create such rules that is the problem. Right now everyone is paying lip-service to freedom of speech/content or focusing on this as a win for net neutrality over big corporations or whatever but they are missing the forest for the trees.
This is a huge power grab and most people are missing the implications. As the OP (that I replied to) pointed out such locus of power then become the focus of effort to control or influence that power. Look up "regulatory capture" on Wikipedia and see what happens in the long run under these types of regulatory environments (an executive agency implementing a broad legislative mandate/authority for some goal with virtually unlimited power to regulate). So those people who think this law is a victory to stop the "evil corporations" from controlling the internet will see that it actually plays into their hands.
More importantly, the locus of power does not just attract monied interests trying to cash-in on and influence that power for financial gain (or to minimize loss) but it attracts really bad people with bad motives that want to control people politically with a gun. (Don't forget that ultimately the power behind the FCC is the power to confiscate property, money or incarcerate at the point of a gun). This is a real threat to freedom of speech and ultimately ALL our freedoms. To concretize this, say you run a controversial blog and it pisses off a bunch of people. Now they petition the FCC to shut you down under the so-called "hate-speech" laws. There isn't a controversial subject that someone somewhere can't construe as hate speech so now the FCC becomes the de facto arbitor of allowable speech on the internet. People can claim innocent motives all they want and that this is not the meaning of the law but history and principles say otherwise.
Of course, this will all take years if not decades for the logical implications to play out -- and the anti-freedom factions will be denying the implications the whole way until its too late.
The FCC delayed this release, declaring that they were obligated to respond to dissenters and that they were going to hold off releasing until dissenters had written up their opinions and they could prepare a rebuttal. (This strikes me as a surprisingly sensible, all-cards-on-the-table governance model, rather than an ongoing media-frenzy feeding blow-by-blow release.)
It pains me greatly knowing that Google worked hard to get a piece of this document dropped. Alas due to a lack of transparency and openness among the FCC and Google's discussion, we'll never have more than faint rumormongering to do here, but in tandem to "Broadband Internet Access Services" it seemed like there was to be another leg of openness, "Broadband Subscriber Access Services." Google not only got to know what was being proposed but got to get it dropped before the public had any idea what was under consideration here.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/26/net_neutrality_rules...
To me it comes off as a denigration of the public by the FCC and Google, and the scant evidence about is hard to interpret as anything but subterfuge and sabotage done at the very last minute. A more transparent process would have been appreciated- rather than this "Government as a Service" model of building regulations and applying them, I'd like to have seen the FCC use some transparency and openness in their creation of these regulations to bootstrap regulations better meeting the public mandate.
I expect most registered, official dissent is going to focus on the FCC doing too much, and that no one is going to dissent saying these protections fail to address core points. But gee do I want to know what was in the 15 "Broadband Subscriber Access Services" pages the FCC dropped at the last minute, and why Google lobbied to drop them.
> It pains me greatly knowing that Google worked hard to get a piece of this document dropped. Alas due to a lack of transparency and openness among the FCC and Google's discussion, we'll never have more than faint rumormongering to do here, but in tandem to "Broadband Internet Access Services" it seemed like there was to be another leg of openness, "Broadband Subscriber Access Services." Google not only got to know what was being proposed but got to get it dropped before the public had any idea what was under consideration here
Google didn't have access to anything you didn't have access to. The got their information from the publicly available Fact Sheet Wheeler released on 2015-02-04.
More detail is in Google's Notice of Ex Parte Communication they released on 2015-02-20 describing the conversations they had via phone with various FCC people [1].
IMO the questions are more interesting than the actual preso.
What we got with this FCC ruling is an arrangement between the ISPs and the edge. Or you might call them the pipes and the content. It's striking to me how little discussions of the last-mile were framing the debate, or how little consumer choice was taken into consideration. According to Wheeler, my interests as a consumer end at me not having my traffic biased. When in fact, most consumers are more interested in having choice in last-mile providers, or just paying less for their Internet connectivity. In short, I'm bummed we didn't get unbundling in the last-mile.
The pipes got a monopoly. Content got the right to offer services without having to pay the pipes for the privilege. Google got the right to access utility poles. Google is the interesting hybrid with a history in content, but quickly moving into pipes.
None of these interests really care if you or I have choice in our last-mile ISP, or how much we pay. So Comcast, TWC and Verizon get handed a monopoly by the FCC. Americans shouldn't have to clamor and beg Google to deliver fiber to their homes.
Also, what happens once Google is everywhere and they turn tyrannical? Do we need to have yet another last-mile provider invest billions to deliver service to our homes? How many Internet wires do I need running into my house to get competition? Imagine how stupid it would seem if I had multiple water pipes running into my house, or electricity wires.
The FCC missed an opportunity to reframe the debate away from net neutrality and towards monopoly in the last mile. If I had choice in last-mile providers net neutralty wouldn't be an issue. If my provider treated me like crap I could simply choose another one.
What we got with this FCC ruling is an arrangement between the ISPs and the edge. Or you might call them the pipes and the content. It's striking to me how little discussions of the last-mile were framing the debate, or how little consumer choice was taken into consideration. According to Wheeler, my interests as a consumer end at me not having my traffic biased. When in fact, most consumers are more interested in having choice in last-mile providers, or just paying less for their Internet connectivity. In short, I'm bummed we didn't get unbundling in the last-mile.
I agree 100%. I was agape that Wheeler at least twice used his old company NABU as an opening shtick- a story about trying to create a competitive cable provider, but not having unbundling to pull it off; for him to transition into regulation instead of competition was comedically dissonant.
As for actually undoing bundling, it's the courts. They decided that given that fiber investments were going to be costly, and given the threat that build-outs might not happen, the scales somehow tipped to allow them to overturn (on purely economic merits) the FCC's rules on local loop unbundling.
Thus, we determine that, particularly in light of a competitive landscape in which competitive LECs are leading the deployment of FTTH, removing incumbent LEC unbundling obligations on FTTH loops will promote their deployment of the network infrastructure necessary to provide broadband services to the mass market.
Truly one of the worst, least well-structured Court rulings to have occurred. And worse, here we are almost 15 years in, with fiber no longer rolling out, and there's no structure or hope to revise this court edict made at a particular time balancing particular economic factors to demand a reassesment- the FCC's Triennial Review.
On the bright side, I'm very happy that on the same day that the FCC announced Open Access approval, they also announced they were going to move to block states and municipalities from legally obstructing community and municipal competitors.
The FCC fought all the way to the Supreme Court to ensure last-mile ISPs don't have to unbundle. Of course that was in 2005 under the Bush Administration when the FCC was run by Michael Powell.
I lean towards the belief that the FCC is involved specifically because there is little or no competition in broadband because it has characteristics of a natural monopoly when delivered via wire/cable/fiber. The FCC didn't hand them a monopoly. The market handed them a monopoly and therefore the FCC needs to regulate it. Besides that, I agree with your other sentiments.
I disagree that ISPs are a natural monopoly. It's crazy to think that my house could choose between two competing road systems, but my house already has multiple wired communications networks.
And if we all agree that ISP monopolies are real -- then we have a way of dealing with monopolies: break up the companies.
It seems to me that this is the proper solution -- yet for some reason it's never discussed and instead we just keep rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
It seems like the idea of going AT&T on modern corporations is completely off the table. Any time I bring this up, people look at me like I'm pro-tyranny.
Break them up. They're holding our nation back and don't deserve to use us as a crutch.
We live in a country where our public officials openly state that companies are "too big to jail", and they are unwilling to prosecute them for wrong doing because it could cause "systemic failure".
Given that Google, Amazon, and Apple are all larger than Comcast in market-cap and most measures of market-share or customer count, will those three be broken up before Comcast, or after?
Almost everywhere in the US, almost every ISP faces at least 4 (and often more) alternative ways to get on the internet. How is that a "monopoly"?
Compared to Google or Apple, Comcast has a smaller market cap and smaller profit margins – and profit margins are a more reliable indicator of market power than eyeballing whether the competition looks "meaningful".
>Almost everywhere in the US, almost every ISP faces at least 4 (and often more) alternative ways to get on the internet.
When you typed "ISP" is that supposed to mean "customer"? Citation?
Against whom is Comcast competing? I know very few people who can choose even between Comcast & AT&T. It's widely known that Comcast colludes with other cable companies (Time Warner) to avoid competition.
You're using a straw man argument. "Comcast is a monopoly." "Hey, look over there at something unrelated to your statement! Therefore, Comcast faces competition."
I had 1 choice in Dallas (TimeWarner). In McKinney (Dallas exurb with a population of 400K) I only had UVerse as a choice.
The next best in those markets is ADSL. But that doesn't fit the bill if we're talking about broadband.
So right now, myself and everyone I'm familiar with, face monopolies.
And you're seriously trying to say Apple doesn't have competition? I have a hell of a lot more choice in what laptop I buy than what broadband provider I have for my home address (read: none).
I decided a couple weeks ago to switch toe DuckDuckGo for search. I opened my Safari Preferences. Made the change. Done.
This seems like an issue of basic reasoning skills.
Almost everywhere in the US, almost every ISP faces at least 4 (and often more) alternative ways to get on the internet.
Compared to Google or Apple, Comcast has a smaller market cap and smaller profit margins – and profit margins are a more reliable indicator of market power than eyeballing whether the competition looks "meaningful".
There are many different ways of dealing with monopolies. Sometimes breaking them up is not the best solution. Unbundling like we had with DSL, is another way to deal with telecom monopolies that doesn't result in breaking them up.
Unfortunately ever since BrandX the FCC has fought against unbundling.
You've got multiple wired communications networks at home partly because that market is operating inefficiently, which is a thing that tends to happen in the real world.
We need to do both. Working to increase competition sounds like the most effective strategy in the long run, but that will be difficult and take a long time by Internet standards. Net neutrality will help curb abuse in the (relatively) short run.
The general response I've seen to that is they're encouraging more last-mile providers to be developed from Title II opening up the equipment poles/lines.
Basically, making it easier for the Google Fiber types to do their thing.
But then they have to live under the same rules as the big guys, and that was one of the rebuttal points. Valid or not.
I can't find any section of the rules that have to do with equipment poles/lines. Can you point it out?
Everything I can find indicates this limits existing providers, rather than opening any possibilities for new providers, and is thus likely to decrease competition/variety. That is, it's making local ISP service more like a commodity/monopoly than it currently is.
This step gives a foundation to curb many aspects of monopoly broadband providers. There needs to be another related but separate fight on competition in the last mile.
Yes, as well as the text of the order, all 5 commissioners statements are available at the link provided.
> It pains me greatly knowing that Google worked hard to get a piece of this document dropped. Alas due to a lack of transparency and openness among the FCC and Google's discussion, we'll never have more than faint rumormongering to do here, but in tandem to "Broadband Internet Access Services" it seemed like there was to be another leg of openness, "Broadband Subscriber Access Services."
Google's (and others') objections to what was openly stated in earlier FCC communications about the rules under development -- that they would classify both retail service provided to consumers and the "service" provided by broadband operators to edge providers (content/service providers that are not their direct customers, like Google, etc.) as separate Title II services were made public. Wheeler openly stated that this was done to provide the strongest possible basis for preventing ISPs from actions like discrimination among edge providers.
The basis for the objections -- from Google, but also from others, IIRC, including other big "edge providers" -- was that classifying a "service" provided by ISPs to edge providers as a "service" might provided a basis for ISPs to charge edge providers for that service, and that classifying retail service as a Title II service provided a strong-enough basis for neutrality regulations without additionally finding the existence of a Title II service provided to "edge providers".
All of this played out in public, was widely reported, and was commented on here on HN.
"No-Blocking. First, we adopt a bright-line rule prohibiting broadband providers from
blocking lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices."
So I guess that means they can block thepiratebay.com, wikileaks or any content congress deems unlawful.
Couldn't these new rules be applied to the Chinese internet and nothing would change? The great firewall only filters what is not lawful.
This gets brought up on HN whenever these rules get mentioned. The point is that the FCC cannot stop ISPs from blocking unlawful content. If an ISP is under some other obligation to block unlawful content these FCC rules cannot overrule that.
That's really all that's going on. By using the term 'lawful content' the FCC is limiting the scope of their rules, nothing more.
Your post makes sense and I don't wanna make it sound like I'm disagreeing with you but can't this be used as a launching point by congress to start deeming new internet content as unlawful?
Congress does not need a launching point from the FCC; Congress can pass whatever law they want, whenever they want. It might later be found to be unconstitutional, but until then it will be the law.
Congress can overrule the FCC; the FCC cannot overrule Congress. That's why the "lawful" language in FCC rules does not matter much.
snowwrestler gets it right, but imagine if the FCC didn't have this language? What would happen if Congress or the courts ruled traffic as unlawful and mandated ISPs to block it?
The ISPs would be stuck in a jam. Either they run afoul of the FCC by blocking it, or they could run afoul of some court by not blocking it. We need clear rules.
With the exception of things like TV and radio, there's little precendent for the FCC telling operators what they can rebroadcast. This 'unlawful' language is the FCC's way of not addressing the issue at all. They're not defining what 'unlawful' means intentionally because it's not part of their Congressional mandate.
> Your post makes sense and I don't wanna make it sound like I'm disagreeing with you but can't this be used as a launching point by congress to start deeming new internet content as unlawful?
Insofar as Congress power under the Constitution to pass laws declaring material (whether or not it is on the internet) unlawful, this regulatory action neither expands nor constrains that power. And, in fact, Congress has plenty of laws in place which make content (including internet content) unlawful.
All this does is applies non-blocking and other rules which do not apply to any content which is unlawful. It doesn't, in any way, effect what content is unlawful, or what content might become unlawful in the future.
> So I guess that means they can block thepiratebay.com or any content congress deems unlawful.
Yes, but it's hardly surprising. The point of the FCC net neutrality rules is not to protect Americans from the censorship by US government -- FCC simply has no power to do that. These rules are there to protect Americans from the censorship by ISP companies.
I wouldn't be so quick to assume that ISPs in the US won't go above and beyond the "call of duty" now, or in the near future. ISPs in the UK [1] and Denmark [2] have already shown willingness to do more than what is legally required of them in order to appease the government or copyright interest groups. What makes Verizon or Comcast different from those ISPs?
> I wouldn't be so quick to assume that ISPs in the US won't go above and beyond the "call of duty" now, or in the near future.
An exception to a new non-blocking rule is not the same thing as a new rule requiring blocking. Particularly, in the absence of the new rules, there was no prohibition on ISPs blocking content (lawful or unlawful), and anything done with the excuse of blocking unlawful content (e.g., blocking all BitTorrent traffic) which also blocked lawful content was allowed. But now, even if blocking unlawful content is the excuse, if a policy blocks lawful content, there will be a basis for challenging it. This increases the legal risk to ISPs of policies for which they might deploy the excuse of "blocking unlawful content" beyond what the legal risk was (practically zero) before the Order was adopted.
So, I'd say it decreases the risk of ISPs trying to appease anyone, government or otherwise, blocking.
If you have broadband from Sky, you are knowingly using a content company for your Internet provider, rather than a company that actually makes its money on providing Internet access. You don't have to do that here, unlike the US. It's very much your own fault for using such a service.
I agree that that seems like a bad choice, or at a minimum, one is choosing to do business with a company that has to internally negotiate an apparent conflict of interest. (Or, vertical integration if one has a generous take on the situation.) I am not so familiar with the layout of ISPs in the UK, but if other choices than Sky are present in a given locale, then, yes, the choice (I would make) is clear.
However, how does the Sky situation differ from the Comcast (content delivery) / NBCUniversal (content production) relationship? Verizon, AT&T, and TWC, as far as I can tell, are only content delivery services. I don't have specific statistics on hand, but I assume that for some people in the United States, Comcast is (unfortunately) the only viable broadband service provider.
What are you smoking, and will you share? Most people in the US can chose from one or two of the handful of large ISPs - Comcast, TWC, AT&T, and Verizon. The Lucky ones can choose between two or three of them, many only have one real option.
All four of those ISPs are content providers - hell, you the Triple-Play is a thing precisely because they all sell subscription TV services as well as internet and voice...
Your reply is encouraging. By the tone of the replies I've gotten it sounds like the censorship will not be applied liberally at all, but I'm glad this is not the case.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that unlawful activity existed outside of the law, anyway.
Meaning, if (for example) I sell you heroin, you can't sue me in small claims court saying that I cut it with baby laxatives and therefore you demand your money back.
If that's how things work, then if Comcast were to block a child porn site, the child porn site couldn't take Comcast to court over it and expect to win. Regardless of any net neutrality laws.
Yes but say you're a torrenting site that allows users to upload their original content to distribute and ISPs block your traffic because they think all torrents are illegal. Then you'd care a lot about that clause.
Well, DPRK says "[People] also have freedom of speech, the press, assembly, demonstration and association, freedom of religious beliefs and they are entitled to submit complaints and petitions." [1]
The executive branch has the ability to define lawful when congress provides them leeway to do so. thats exactly what these rules are about. so that's an important qualifier I would think. All three branches of government dictate what is lawful (at different levels of abstraction).
Today we include packet loss as a necessary
part of the network performance disclosure.
Interesting! Wireless carriers could definitely compete on that..
The 2014 Open Internet NPRM tentatively concluded that we should require
that broadband providers disclose meaningful information regarding the
source, location, timing, speed, packet loss, and duration of network
congestion. As discussed above, we continue to require disclosure of actual
network speed and latency (as in 2010), and also require disclosure of
packet loss. We decline at this time to require disclosure of the source,
location, timing, or duration of network congestion, noting that congestion
may originate beyond the broadband provider’s network and the limitations
of a broadband provider’s knowledge of some of these performance
characteristics.
I saw so many people complaining about how this would increase taxes. Yet, the full details of the ruling had yet to be seen by the public. Now they can eat their words.
37.
"Nor will our actions result in the imposition of any new federal taxes or fees; the ability of states to impose fees on broadband is already limited by the congressional Internet tax moratorium."
I don't know why this was voted down. If ISPs are not allowed to double-bill or drop packets, it's likely that they will increase prices (or not increase speed while keeping prices the same, which amounts to an increase over what it should be).
a.k.a "regulatory recovery fees". On the other hand, if an ISP felt they could charge more, why aren't they doing so already? It's not like this is a competitive market with low profit margins...
Here's the portion about unlawful content I was waiting for (page 132m para. 304), with the parts I found especially interesting italicized:
"In the NPRM, we tentatively concluded that we should retain the definition of reasonable network management we previously adopted, which does not include preventing transfer of unlawful content or the unlawful transfer of content as a reasonable practice.782 We affirm this tentative conclusion and re-state that open Internet rules do not prohibit broadband providers from making reasonable efforts to address the transfer of unlawful content or unlawful transfers of content to ensure that open Internet rules are not used as a shield to enable unlawful activity or to deter prompt action against such activity.
For example, the no-blocking rule should not be invoked to protect copyright infringement, which has adverse consequences for the economy, nor should it protect child pornography. We reiterate that our rules do not alter the copyright laws and are not intended to prohibit or discourage voluntary practices undertaken to address or mitigate the occurrence of copyright infringement.783 After consideration of the record, we retain this rule, which is applicable to both fixed and mobile broadband providers engaged in broadband Internet access service and reads as follows:
Nothing in this part prohibits reasonable efforts by a provider of broadband Internet access service to address copyright infringement or other unlawful activity.
305. Some commenters contend that this rule promotes the widespread use of intrusive packet inspection technologies by broadband providers to filter objectionable content and that such monitoring poses a threat to customers’ privacy rights.784
Certainly, many broadband providers have the technical tools to conduct deep packet inspection of unencrypted traffic on their networks,785 and consumer privacy is a paramount concern in the Internet age. Nevertheless, we believe that broadband monitoring concerns are adequately addressed by the rules we adopt today, so we decline to alter this provision. This rule is limited to protecting “reasonable efforts . . . to address copyright infringement or other unlawful activity.”786
We retain the discretion to evaluate the reasonableness of broadband providers’ practices under this rule on a case-by-case basis. Consumers also have many tools at their disposal to protect their privacy against deep packet inspection—including SSL encryption, virtual private networks, and routing methods like TOR.787
Further, the complaint processes we adopt today add to these technical methods and advance consumer interests in this area.788"
Some commenters contend that this rule promotes the widespread use of tape recorder technologies by telephone providers and that such monitoring poses a threat to customers’ privacy rights. Certainly, many telephone providers have tape recorders for inspection of voice on their networks,785 and consumer privacy is a paramount concern in the Telephone age. [..] Consumers also have many tools at their disposal to protect their voice against tape recorders — including speaking into a muffler.
Obviously, that is completely insane, so why would we accept that nonsense on the internet? Why would the regulating agency accept deep packet inspection and simultaneously recommend TOR when they are the very agency that is meant to prevent degrading the network?
We'll still need TOR, but at least it won't be Verizon listening in. Note the junior level Orwellian language here, where they list a bunch of reasons why DPI shouldn't be allowed only to follow it up with a Nevertheless, we believe that states the opposite while giving zero reasons for doing so. If they wanted to believe in something, they should have opened up a church. From a government agency, that's an insult.
It would not be easy to legislatively protect consumers from deep packet inspection, because the FCC would need to agree on a suitable definition of "deep packet inspection." I fail to see many reasonable paths to accomplishing that without simltaneously interfering with real network monitoring policies and best practices.
Personally I'm happy that the FCC acknowledged the complaint of DPI, but also acknowledged the tools to defend against it if need be. They are actually avoiding additional legislation, by refusing to limit DPI and therefore define it in law.
I do wonder if this acknowledgement of VPN/Tor, which must certainly be one of the first in the history of executive agency legislation, will simply be the first of many. I hope this tacit acknowledgement does not tumble into subtle discouragement in future legislation.
Everyone's far too busy celebrating how they think this will bring them fast, cheap, reliable internet to be concerned about insignificant things like privacy.
>In the NPRM, we tentatively concluded that we should retain the definition of reasonable network management we previously adopted, which does not include preventing transfer of unlawful content or the unlawful transfer of content as a reasonable practice.
What about cases where an ISP can't tell? For example, if a user is using encrypted BitTorrent, could an ISP block it on the basis that 89% of files on BitTorrent are illegal? [1]
That's what concerns me about the rules. It's kind of a bait and switch. First they say that it isn't permissible to block "lawful content", which is actually quite reasonable because it's hard to complain about something that blocks exclusively unlawful content. But then we get this insanity from the quoted portion above:
"Nothing in this part prohibits reasonable efforts by a provider of broadband Internet access service to address copyright infringement or other unlawful activity."
Which is a total inversion of the principle. Instead of allowing blocking only when you're sure it's only blocking unlawful content, it's purporting to allow blocking of unspecified amounts of entirely lawful content as long as it's part of "reasonable" (whatever that means) efforts to address unlawful activity. It's a loophole you could fit a carrier battle group through.
The rules say they can't block lawful content. If the content is questionably lawful, then they won't block it, for fear of being found to have blocked lawful content.
Well, the fact that the whole effort to set up general net neutrality rules at the FCC started when their ruling against Comcast's BitTorrent blocking was struck down by the courts as outside of their case-by-case power without generally-applicable rules, I suspect the answer is that that would be a perfect example of what the present Commission, at least, would not find to be a reasonable effort to address unlawful content.
> 30. But this Order does not apply the open Internet rules to interconnection.
TLDR: Relax, Comcast. You can still intentionally let all your transit ports saturate every evening so Netflix will blow unless they pay you to peer. Which is what you really wanted to do.
But Netflix (or their service provider) probably should be paying to peer. The problem is that Comcast is also in the media game so they have an incentive to use the peering as leverage against a competitor. An ISP should be able to make technical decisions on how they connect to other networks. Unfortunately the big oligopo-ISPs make those technical decisions based on desires other than having an optimal network.
My point is that they ban explicit prioritization yet ISPs can achieve the exact same result through network topology. It's a huge loophole.
Put another way, if I pay Comcast for XX mbps, it should be possible for some company to send me data at XX mbps without paying Comcast. Otherwise what exactly am I paying for?
One solution would be to force last-mile ISPs to designate a location for each customer (for example "all Manhattan subscribers => 60 Hudson St") where Netflix etc could peer without settlement only with those customers. Comcast doesn't have to carry Netflix's traffic across the country, just from the nearest IX to the customer. If the customer monthly fees don't cover that, what exactly are they paying for? Any VOD offerings from Comcast would be required to routed through the same points, without routing preference over 3rd party traffic like Netflix.
In some sense, that would be a light version of forced cable leasing, since instead of movies, a service could offer a vpn/tunnel to general internet access with better transit provisioning than the last-mile ISP.
I'm not sure they've even banned explicit prioritization. I've only seen where they ban paid prioritization. They seem to have left it to be decided on a case-by-case basis what to do about claimed good-faith "reasonable network management" practices that have nasty side effects.
I see your point but have you considered that Comcast is the only one who controls the last mile routing to any specific customer? By definition that is why the route is called "last mile." Since Comcast controls the ingress to every household subscribed to it, it also controls the traffic rate and can throttle it if need be. However, if Comcast wants its argument to hold that throttling protects network congestion, then it must also throttle the source of the ingress traffic. Otherwise it's just barricading traffic from its destination, ultimately creating a bottleneck that solves no problem.
OK, I want to send you XX mbps and you want to receive it. You pay Comcast. Am I now entitled to a free connection?
It seems that the real complication is the Comcast has such a huge marketshare that they don't need to be competitive on peering. Whereas if they had real competition, then subscribers would drop Comcast and go with an ISP that peers better.
> I want to send you XX mbps and you want to receive it. You pay Comcast. Am I now entitled to a free connection?
Yes, provided you deliver it to the designated IX for my location and pay whatever applicable meet-me-room fees. Realistically only CDNs are going to do that for the O(100s) of locations in the country.
The alternative is to "negotiate" with Comcast. Since your BATNA is losing access to a huge fraction of Internet subscribers, Comcast is going to calculate your business's profit per megabyte and demand 90% of that. They know what Netflix costs. They know how much bandwidth the average Netflix customer uses.
A peer connection in the same city as the subscriber is literally the cheapest traffic for Comcast's network to handle. If their rates don't cover bandwidth to that, they should raise their rates.
Cool, so you buy 1Gbps from Comcast. Then request 1Gbps from 10 different networks, each day, for a month. So you're saying Comcast should setup free peering on the order of 300Gbps just to service you?
And buying transit is even cooler! Let's do this, you go signup for 1Mbps from Comcast, then I'll put a server on my own ISP and you can go force Comcast to buy from me. I charge $1000/Kbps.
I know. So why is Comcast obligated to connect to discount ISPs like Cogent? Just because Netflix decided to buy connectivity from them? What's stopping Netflix from buying connectivity from MyISP (who only has a single FastE connection to L3), then demanding Comcast peer or pay with me? What's so special about Cogent, or HE?
I don't think Comcast should be obligated to connect to any particular ISP. But every ISP along the chain needs to provision enough capacity that there isn't congestion.
I'm pro "net neutrality" in principle, but I'm genuinely curious how we expect to achieve true "net neutrality" given how the internet works. Obviously the internet is not a fully connected network, and we don't have infinite bandwidth.
Could an ISP could decide to only peer with networks that happen to throttle Netflix, for example? Do we expect the government to force every ISP to peer with any network that wishes to peer with them, for free? Maybe at the "market" rate?
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that Comcast "blocking" access to HBO Go has anything to do with net neutrality. In that case Comcast is saying that the HBO cable subscription they sell doesn't include HBO Go access. This is possible because of the requirement to "authenticate" your HBO Go access through your cable/satellite provider.
So that has more to do with television than internet regulation IMO.
It's still an agreement between Comcast and HBO based on TV subscriptions - it's not like Comcast is null routing the packets that would allow "authentication". Luckily, the market (i.e. HBO, in the face of consumer demand and competition) has already worked around these stifling agreements by providing the unbundled HBO Now. Which Comcast can't block, DNSSEC misconfiguration notwithstanding.
Comcast isn't blocking anything there, they are failing to take positive steps that enable their TV customers to use a service that is dependent on verification that they are Comcast's TV customers with an HBO subscription
Even though it is a service provided over the internet, what Comcast is doing (or, more precisely, delaying or failing to do) is in their role as a Cable TV service provider, not as a broadband ISP.
Now, once HBOs streaming service that is independent of a TV contract is available, if Comcast were blocking that (whether generally or on a device-specific basis), these rules would apply to that blocking.
You seem to be mistaking the newly launched HBO Now for the existing HBO Go service. Comcast continues to block the latter on certain devices, even for paying customers.
> Section 254: Promoting Universal Broadband. Section 254 promotes the deployment and availability of communications networks to all Americans, including rural and low-income Americans—furthering our goals of more and better broadband.
The FCC has been running pilots related to this under the existing Lifeline program, but nothing has materialized yet. Seems they're taking seriously the U.N. report that regarded Internet access as a basic human right.
Note that the FCC recently redefined "broadband" to >=25Mbps.
Note that the term "broadband" has largely disappeared in last-mile ISP advertising. (I briefly talked to AT&T about it a la "I signed up for broadband, but am not getting anywhere close to 25Mbps", rep got vague about what was promised.)
This all may provide interesting consequences. By redefining, suddenly large swaths of the country which have & are generally satisfied with 3-20Mbps connections are suddenly "without broadband" and subject to renewed FCC bureaucratic campaigns to bring them out of such third-world conditions.
Going to have to withhold judgement on this document until better minds have their time with it. While I agree with rule that providers may not establish preference with regards to content I am mostly concerned with the idea it takes four hundred pages to document this requirement.
It takes 8 pages. See Appendix A, which is the actual rules. All the rest is commentary, analysis, historical background, and something like 80 pages of dissents by the Republican Commissioners.
The "free market" failed when telco companies started flexing their monopoly muscle to punish their competitors. In the U.S. we have a rich history of regulating monopolies, and these companies brought it on themselves with their inability to behave like good corporate citizens.
"Free markets" should be limited when they obstruct the liberty of the majority of the public or limit competition on a massive scale. This creates deadweight loss which is an economic net negative.
Imagine if, six months after moving to a new house, your electricity bill doubled because you were no longer in the "promotional period." Your electric company claims there's a free market, because you're free to install solar panels. Comcast et. al are no different than other local monopolies. Their claims of providing a "vibrant and innovative" broadband market are laughable when you look at the far superior state of broadband in other countries.
The cable companies were acting like a cartel of corporate thugs, they openly defied the government's ability to do anything about it, and they got served a massive dish of justice. All because the people spoke out and pushed the government to act in their interest. This is a great moment for American activism and democracy.
The actual rules aren't even close to 400 pages. The 400 pages consist of the legal justification, the whys and hows, and dissents. The actual rules are seven pages.
> This initial ruling establishes the precedent that the FCC has regulatory authority over the Internet.
No, it doesn't, its not the first FCC regulation directed at the internet. Its one of several assertions of FCC regulatory authority over aspects of the internet.
Further, even if it did establish that precedent, it still wouldn't do anything to affect the capacity for future bad regulation, because any future regulation could do everything this did plus any bad things all at once, there is no need for separate and preceding "precedent" creating action by a regulatory body to enable future regulations.
Pai's dissent touched on a point no one I've talked to has considered: the hundreds of tiny carriers--mostly WISPs--across the US who might/will be affected by this. They can barely compete against big telco and cable as is.
Brett Glass has written quite a bit about the WISP perspective, but my interpretation is that WISP networks are so limited that they can only compete if they lie about either their speeds or about how much of the Internet they're providing access to. I don't want competition that bad.
In the modern era, when a law requires complex administration, its enactment by the legislative branch does not end the process of defining what the law will be and how it will function. For any complex area, an administrative body is set up to implement and administer the law in its details. That means appointing bureaucrats who take the broad mandate of the law and give it life by applying it to the countless details that actually affect people's lives. So, the tax laws specify broad enactments saying that people must pay income taxes, estate taxes, excise taxes, etc. But the IRS exists to give those laws life and to promulgate a mountain of regulations that tell us when this is that item constitutes an item of income or a deductible expense or an exemption from this or that, etc., etc. Of course, under the way that U.S. law works, any such agency must be given full authority to exercise discretion to give reasonable interpretations to whatever legislative enactments set up the statutory authority under which it functions. At the same time, the power of the agency is strictly limited to working within that statutory authority. Within its bounds, the agency has vast powers; outside its bounds, it can do nothing.
Thus, the essence of administrative law is the idea of reasonable discretion to promulgate and enforce regulations to see that the law's underlying purposes are fulfilled. The power of the bureaucrats who make such regulations is enormous, as long as they stay within their bounds. And courts routinely accept this. So long as the regulations adopted by the bureaucrats are deemed to be within their bounds, and not deemed to be acting arbitrarily or capriciously or without rational basis, the courts defer to the bureaucratic judgment and uphold whatever they do.
And so we now have the FCC of "we will censor this and that" and of "we will revoke your license for this or that" fame being entrusted with broad powers to regulate the internet, powers that could be legally used to do all sorts of things deemed abhorrent and restrictive of freedom but as to which the agency assures us it will use voluntary restraint in exercising.
This, I believe, is hardly a sure foundation upon which to base a long-term hope of assuring a free and open internet.
I do believe, given the political climate, that it will be a short-term solution for guaranteeing "net neutrality," whatever that means exactly.
But, in our federal system, amid the various ways the idea of net neutrality might have been won and protected, the worst imaginable way from a conceptual standpoint is to say that internet freedom can best be guaranteed by giving broad discretionary power to bureaucrats to do what they will within the nebulous confines of a communications act enacted 80 years ago that did not even contemplate modern technology as we now know it. This is the very act that has been most characterized for decades now by an orgy of lobbying by one competitive group or interest or another to gain this or that advantage over others and whose crowning glory appears to rest in a mountain of endless litigation over what this or that may mean in the act.
I have purposely framed the above comments with multiple "this or that" references because that is the whole idea behind a nebulous bureaucratic framework: it can morph and shift in ways scarcely imaginable as time passes, as vested interests mount campaigns for their pet issues, and things get carved up by insiders with the nominal aim of protecting consumers but with the normal goal of carving up the booty for those who have the biggest stakes in the process.
Even in this thread (and many others like it), we already see vigorous debates over the meaning of this or that interpretation and of the motives behind them. This is all deemed safe for the moment because it is discussing an issue over which people are passionate, an issue which is right before us, and an issue over which each of us believes we have sound reasoning that ought to be adopted in the current debate.
But take that same process, extend it to a whole range of issues that the FCC might now address, add to the mix the vigorous energies of everybody and his uncle who has a stake in getting this or that competitive advantage on the issue, and then toss it to the courts to sort out who is right, well, you then have a lethal brew that in my view leaves us vulnerable to future abuse that is hardly trivial but affects the very essence of how a free and open internet ought to function.
Remember, you always believe the "good guys" will be in charge. But give enough unrestricted power to any governmental agency with very few checks on that power and the "bad guys" may then run wild with what you have done, much to your chagrin.
I realize this is a very unpopular position in this forum. But it has to be said. I truly hope I am wrong in my concerns.