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SecretAsianMan

Net Neutrality

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Last week news came out that the FCC is going to propose some new rules allowing companies to pay ISPs for the ability to deliver their content faster and potentially letting ISPs slow down competitors.  The common example given is that MSNBC.com, owned by Comcast, could be given priority over other news services to any customer on Comcast (like ME) unless they pay Comcast a buttload of money.  This obviously gives large corporations an advantage over smaller sites and businesses who can't afford that kind of deal.

 

The actual vote doesn't take place for another couple weeks, but the fact that it's being considered at all scares me.  Does this bother anyone else?

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What I love is that it actually disincentivizes last mile providers like Comcast from actually upgrading their infrastructure. They already oversubscribe their networks (I buy a 30Mbps link, but when I try and stream something from Netflix, I still get buffering because Comcast's shitty network gets congested), then they put Netflix in a position where they have to pay up to keep their subscribers happy via a direct peering agreement, bypassing the congestion. So now Comcast is collecting money on both ends. If they actually had a connection to the rest of the Internet that could handle what it's supposed to (ie what I pay for in the first place damn it), they'd lose out on that sweet Netflix money. And since there's literally no other way for me to get high speed Internet from anyone else, I can't even quit their shitty service for someone else!

 

What's that you say? The current FCC chairman is a former top lobbyist for the cable industry? You don't say.

 

It's all very disheartening...

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Not only that, but I also expect content providers to increase their prices to help pay for the right to keep service at the current speed.  Netflix already agreed to pay Comcast for high speed access months ago and it later raised prices for new members.  There are probably other factors at work here as well, but I can't believe that paying Comcast had nothing to do with it.

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I don't know how this affects me over here - I don't know if any of my internet traffic goes through last mile providers - but boy howdy I didn't think the FCC had it in them to fuck up critical telecommunications decisions again after their fucking up of radio and television, but I guess they did!

 

On the other hand, I think it's sort of out of their hands now - I don't think they can kill the internet single-handedly any more, and I don't think America can convince everyone else to destroy the internet as well.

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Paying content providers don't get faster connections to the end user, non-paying content providers get worse connections.

 

Also, don't confuse peering with paying for "premium" connectivity. Both can improve the connectivity to the provided service. But with peering a shorter route is bought. With premium connectivity packets are given a higher priority in being processed.

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Yeah I probably have some of my terminology mixed up. I thought Netflix was now paying to connect directly to Comcast's network instead of having to go through some other higher tier networks, the links to which Comcast was essentially refusing to upgrade, so it's more of a peering thing in this case than premium service?

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I kind of trust that, being outside the US, the wider internet will just route around the damage this does to it. If it's especially bad, then viable competitors for things located in the US will emerge elsewhere.

 

Charging for tiered delivery of packets is a fucking awful idea, but it's never going to go away as long as someone thinks they can make money from it. Thanks, invisible hand! *Invisible thumbs up*

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I'm going to copy and paste an email I wrote to Wheeler that I also copied onto my Tumblr, sorry for the wall of text:

 

Dear Chairman Wheeler,

 

I’m writing you regarding the new Internet rules that you and your fellow Commissioners have proposed regarding privileges granted to ISPs that would allow preferential traffic treatment.

 

One of the greatest rewards that the Internet has bestowed upon the citizens of the United States is potential energy. Due to its availability to the common man, the Internet is truly an equalizing force that can allow one person’s voice to be amplified despite his/her position or income and allows a fledgling company with a brilliant idea to grow to the likes of peers among the Fortune 500.

 

By explicitly granting ISPs the privilege to charge sites/services for preferential traffic treatment, the FCC is essentially removing the equalizing core from the inherent nature of the Internet. Big companies can simply pay to elevate their product and leave upstart competitors in the mud. ISPs with interests in industries disrupted by the internet will have inherent power to keep competition down. If a cable ISP selling video content was able to disproportionately charge an upstart company like Netflix or YouTube in their early stages of creation, I submit that they wouldn’t exist to challenge those ISPs in the free market as they can today.

 

Those companies will undoubtedly be able to pay up to ISPs if these rules are passed; they already succeeded and have the ability to cement their place on the internet. What of the next Netflix or YouTube? What if there’s a new form of media that had a chance to exist on the internet, but the ISPs saw them as a threat to their business and charged them to the point that they’d have to give up? I’m not convinced that the FCC’s promise that these charges will be “commercially reasonable’ has any teeth. Regardless of that, any discrimination is destabilizing to the nature of the internet, whether or not the discriminatory charge is financially reasonable.

 

The FCC is supposed to defend the rights and interests of the people of the United States by means of regulation of the communication industry. If every “regulation” you pass is simply an approval of the abuse of power that ISPs wield, then I propose that the FCC stop trying to regulate anything. As it is, the FCC doesn’t speak for my interests, only the interests of companies that try to wring every possible dollar from every possible source, regardless of what damage they do to the very communications that the FCC should be trying to protect.

 

Chairman Wheeler, please recognize the error of these rules. There should be a balance between the rights of American companies and American people and that balance is being disrupted by these new rules. Net neutrality helps the people far more than it hurts these companies and plays a big part in keeping that overall balance intact. These rules are an attack on the principle of net neutrality and the FCC’s proposal of them truly shake my faith in the government’s regulatory role in this industry.

 

Regards,

Jonathan Cole

 

Context: FCC planning new Internet rules that will gut Net Neutrality. Get ready to pay more for the stuff you love online. [boingBoing]

 

And if you want to contact the FCC, here’s their information:

 

The FCC Commissioners’ email addresses, to which concerned citizens might send concerned email: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Mike.O’[email protected]. The FCC’s main telephone line is 1-888-225-5322.

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I know Google is big on net neutrality, I wonder where Google fiber will land in regards to this if it does go through.

 

Weird that we have to rely on one or two idealistic companies to uphold public business ethics

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Everywhere I've ever moved in both Austin and Houston has only given me two choices between some company or other, usually Comcast/Time Warner being one of them. Clear used to be available and I was using them for a few years but I moved somewhere where there was no tower around and Sprint bought them out anyway. You pretty much have to pay for cable internet to get decent speeds. Apparently U-Verse with AT&T is good, but fuck if I'm paying $100+ a month for that package. It doesn't really matter because all of these companies have poor customer service and completely unknowledgeable techs. If you skirt around renting their overpriced piece of shit modem by buying or already having your own, they fucking hassle you every time anyway acting like it's something you did with your modem should an outage ever occur.

 

I guess the sum of what I'm saying here is all of these major corporations already have us by the balls anyway, so at this point I feel like changes in net neutrality laws, while I disagree with them, isn't going to impact me in any way whatsoever. However it will impact small businesses I hear, but only as far as their web services. Why can't there be any small business ISP providers? Can we do that yet?

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Why can't there be any small business ISP providers? Can we do that yet?

 

I live in quite a few miles outside of my nearest town, and depend on a small business (Mercury Wireless) for my Internet, via fixed wireless broadband.  And honestly it's the best ISP I've ever had.  The speeds aren't the fastest, but that's just because it's long range wireless and there are simply limits to that tech.  But outages are fixed quickly and when I have to call them, I get someone knowledgeable and friendly who usually knows how to take care of my problem. 

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I guess the sum of what I'm saying here is all of these major corporations already have us by the balls anyway, so at this point I feel like changes in net neutrality laws, while I disagree with them, isn't going to impact me in any way whatsoever. 

 

It may change your mind somewhat if you were aware that, unlike most countries, the FCC decided that the internet is not a telecommunications service, and so the companies that own the wires have no obligation to allow other companies to use it. Most other countries, there's still only one or two companies that own the wires, but a lot more ISPs and a lot more competition. The FCC decided that they'd prefer to see competition in the hardware, and then it turned out there's only about four ways to distribute internet at scale. So this FCC decision is them essentially saying they couldn't give a rat's arse about the mess they've made.

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Yesterday President Obama issued a statement to the FCC urging them to maintain net neutrality.  In particular, it outlined these things:

 

  • No blocking. If a consumer requests access to a website or service, and the content is legal, your ISP should not be permitted to block it. That way, every player — not just those commercially affiliated with an ISP — gets a fair shot at your business.
  • No throttling. Nor should ISPs be able to intentionally slow down some content or speed up others — through a process often called “throttling” — based on the type of service or your ISP’s preferences.
  • Increased transparency. The connection between consumers and ISPs — the so-called “last mile” — is not the only place some sites might get special treatment. So, I am also asking the FCC to make full use of the transparency authorities the court recently upheld, and if necessary to apply net neutrality rules to points of interconnection between the ISP and the rest of the Internet.
  • No paid prioritization. Simply put: No service should be stuck in a “slow lane” because it does not pay a fee. That kind of gatekeeping would undermine the level playing field essential to the Internet’s growth. So, as I have before, I am asking for an explicit ban on paid prioritization and any other restriction that has a similar effect.

 

In other words the things we've been asking for the whole time.  He's basically asking the FCC to make it a utility.  Technically the FCC is still an independent agency so they don't have to do what Obama says but I really hope they'll listen, both to him and the 4 million public comments they got.

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The immediate backlash from ISPs on this announcement has been fantastic. Apparently net neutrality will destroy the economy? And kill competition which, to my knowledge, doesn't actually exist. Also Ted Cruz compared net neutrality to Obamacare. Stay classy Ted.

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Tom Wheeler, Chairman of the FCC, wrote an Op-ed for Wired about Net Neutrality

 

In it, he outlines his plan to propose that the FCC use it's Title II authority on broadband (including mobile).  In other words, he wants to classify the Internet as a utility.  Doing so would allow the FCC to prohibit ISPs from discriminating based on content (ie throttling or blocking lawful content).  Title II would also allow them to regulate the rates ISPs charge for service, but Wheeler said that he plans to modernize Title II and rate regulation won't be part of it.  The idea behind that is to allow companies to invest in their networks without fear of losing money due FCC mandated rates, though presumably the FCC would still step in should companies charge too much.  In general it seems to favor the consumers pretty heavily.  Naturally, companies like Verizon aren't thrilled.  The FCC will vote on the proposals later this month.

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Yes, awesome! I have been advocating making the internet a utility for probably longer than I had a good grasp on what that would entail.

 

Outside of straight up voting against the suggestions, what would the potential roadblocks be for enacting regulation like this?

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Title II is the dream, but it's also reversible by any subsequent FCC that is appointed in new presidential administrations. I was actually hoping that Dems would be less bullish on congressional legislation that would be more of a compromise, but more permanent as law.

 

I'm super duper cautiously optimistic.

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Basically the big companies will be able to bribe people to vote against it, and if they can't do it now then they'll wait for the next president and try again.

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I think if Comcast hadn't idiotically started throttling Netflix in order to get them to cough up money for a direct peering deal, there would have been way less pressure for this to happen. It's such a highly visible maneuver that a bigger chunk of the public started taking notice of what net neutrality is really for and why it's important. It goes along with now clearly bone-headed move of Verizon suing over the old FCC neutrality rules, which resulted in the judge effectively forcing the FCC to do this Title II reclassification. These corporations seem to have absolutely zero foresight.

 

Assuming this gets through the lawsuit blast that comes from Verizon and co., I'm hopeful it'll stick around. While I suppose the FCC could later revoke this, there'd have to be a good reason to avoid a public outcry (and corporate outcry from the big silicon valley players).

 

I still want to see line unbundling, but that's a pipe-dream.

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