Net Neutrality

Wait, there are state laws limiting internet speeds in cities?

Two different issues. The major internet providers wanted to charge different rates for different content providers; meanwhile, at the same time, many state governments wouldnt allow their cities to provide free internet wifi access in competition with the pay for service providers.

Crossposting from the US Politics thread.

The full order hasn't been published yet, but here's a pretty good breakdown of what's been said about it so far.

ISPs are being reclassified as a telecommunication service (rather than an information service) under Title II of the Communications Act, which puts them in the same category as things like phone companies. This authorizes the FCC to impose certain regulations on them. (They tried imposing some regulations without reclassifying them, but Verizon took them to court over it and won, so the FCC choose to reclassify them in order to give themselves the legal authority to enforce the regulations.)

The new rules ban ISPs from blocking or throttling traffic and from paid prioritization ("fast lanes"), and requires them to disclose their network management practices. That last is largely an enforcement issue, so that they can't claim to be doing something for network management reasons while actually doing it for business reasons. This is because "reasonable network management" is exempted from the rules — ie, ISPs can block/throttle (but not require payment for) something if doing so is necessary for the health of their network. The rules also don't apply to anything not on the public internet — such as VOIP services that don't go through the internet proper, meaning that ISPs can charge you separately for phone service that travels over the same infrastructure as their internet service. (Said phone service is subject to different regulation, as a phone service, rather than being subject to regulation as an internet connection.)

There are other random things not directly related to net neutrality — such as a additional privacy rules, a requirement for ISPs to investigate customer complaints, and the ability for customers to formally complain to the FCC about "unjust and unreasonable" behavior, etc.

There are also things that the FCC could have imposed under Title II and chose not to, including "unbundling" requirements. Unbundling would mean that ISPs would have to sell their network access wholesale — as in, to other ISPs, meaning that no matter who owned the infrastructure that goes to your house, you'd be able to pick any ISP you wanted. (This is how phone lines currently work — if you're talking about actual phone lines and not VOIP service through your ISP, anyway.) The fact that they're not doing that is something of a disappointment, as it would have effectively destroyed the established ISPs' local monopolies. Alas, it is not to be... yet. And what we did get is a hell of a lot better than nothing.

Separate from the Title II thing, the FCC also overturned state laws preventing municipal ISPs from expanding. These laws were largely framed as preventing the government from driving existing ISPs out of business in their service areas, but in reality what municipal ISPs have done is actually introduce competition into markets that were formerly local monopolies. In areas where municipal ISPs exist, they generally provide better service at lower prices than elsewhere. The Communications Act requires the FCC to use "measures that promote competition in the local telecommunications market, or other regulating methods that remove barriers to infrastructure investment", which is their legal basis for this ruling.

The FCC is almost certain to face lawsuits from ISPs about the rulings, and Republicans in Congress have promised to pass legislature overturning the rulings as well. Since the FCC is part of the executive branch, its job is to interpret and enforce the laws passed by the legislative branch (ie, Congress). Thus the repeated mentions of the Communications Act, the law that gives the FCC the authority to do all the stuff they're doing. So if Congress passes new laws that remove the FCC's authority to make these decisions, they won't be able to do what they've said they're going to do. Of course, the chances of such a law making it past President Obama without a veto are virtually nil, so that's effectively impossible at least for another few years. Lawsuits are a dicier matter, but given that the judges ruling on the Verizon lawsuit basically said "the FCC can't do this unless they declare ISPs common carriers under Title II", which is exactly what they've done, there's no obvious case to be made against the rulings.

edited 26th Feb '15 6:38:39 PM by NativeJovian

5 Things that could kill the new internet rules

• The courts
• Congress forcing through laws that ban the Web from being treated as a public utility
• A Republican President
• Congress defunding the FCC from ever being able to enforce its new rules
• Deadlock of no new commissioner and 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans could allow exemption applications not touched for a year to be automatically granted (a rule that DOES exist in the FCC)

edited 30th Mar '15 5:17:20 AM by PotatoesRock

All seem pretty far-fetched, tbh. The American people are loudly interested in defending the open internet. SOPA was basically a bipartisan bill before it died a fiery death. Now that we've cleaned out even more of the Blue Dogs, no democrat's going to touch anything like it (although really, at the end of the day, if a law enshrines the "no fast lanes" and "no content blocking" policies, that's win enough, even if we lose utility rules in the bargain), so legislation's out. I don't think the Republicans really care enough (especially for something that is vastly popular with the American public) to do another budget showdown over it. The courts are NOT going to flip-flop on this, the FCC is doing what they were told to do.

The last one about someone resigning and then it creeping through the exemptions hole just seems like clutching at straws.

Only the Republican in 2016 has a decent chance of happening.

If current economic trends continue, a Democratic President in 2016 is all but guaranteed, and a Democratic Senate is very likely. The GOP will have to engineer some kind of disaster to get their eventual nominee elected, because the electoral math is simply not in their favor.

Also, with the strong public popularity of net neutrality rules, it'll be very hard for any GOP candidate to make undoing them part of their platform. It's not a sexy message for the Tea Party because they don't understand technology any better than they understand government; it just fits into their general "oppose anything government does" ideology. The GOP's stance is intended to draw donations from the ISPs that are affected by the FCC rules; it's that simple.

edited 30th Mar '15 12:24:57 PM by Fighteer

This is perhaps only tangetally related, but the Chinese government has a new weapon of sorts, designed to use virtually any Chinese internet-connected computer to throw DDOS attacks against sites they don't like.

In short, they've put all Chinese computers in a botnet?

Is it okay to necro this? They're at it again.

https://www.battleforthenet.com/ is organizing an internet-wide protest today, July 12th.

My take: I actually feel like I understand both sides but I don't trust IS Ps

The bill will pass. I say we start looking at how to salvage as much of our endangered internet experiences as possible in the absence of net neutrality.

See my only hang up is that economists seem to be split on the issue

There isn't going to be anything left to salvage unless companies decide to not bleed everyone else and of course IS Ps only care about money now, not long term after the internet is dead.

Gamers who play games online are absolutely screwed as well.

It absolutely can not pass.

edited 12th Jul '17 12:50:39 PM by Memers

Jack Posobiec was caught planting fake pro-net neutrality flyers backing satanic porn.

For context, this guy got sacked from the Canadian riff on Breitbart for being too garbage for them.

Sounds like a real piece of work.

The fight for NN was over last year and free Internet lost. The bill will pass, no doubt about it, and will probably pass on partisan lines.

What are the odds of it not passing, might I ask?

I'd assume "not good" since everyone in the government seems to be some sort of far right(?) hive mind at the moment, but I'll take any chance as a chance.

What Congress passes, a future Congress can unpass.

1.6 million comments from NN allies had been sent to the FCC yesterday

edited 13th Jul '17 12:34:29 PM by MorningStar1337

Yeah, and received by a bunch of "people" who don't give a flying fuck.

And the worst part is that many of those bots are obviously fake, but the FCC refuses to remove them. It's not even half-way difficult to spot these things either, since most of them spam the exact same comment:

Hell, I made a post in support of keeping Net Neutrality on the FCC's site, and somehow on the same damned day a duplicate of my name appeared, parroting that quote! Go and check out the link below to see if your name and address are being cloned.

Comcastroturf.com

I wonder if a Libel suit is possible with this.

@93: Three-plus years is a lot of time, though, and I can only wonder how much stuff would be lost or screwed up or whatever by the time we'd be able to get net neutrality back.

Maybe I'm overthinking how bad the short-term ramifications are, though. But whether I am or not, I don't like where this is going.

Is it just me or is that reading like the message for opposing the repeal of Title II with some words swapped around to make it say the opposite thing instead?

Obvious reason aside, something about it doesn't really look right.

Comcast Threatens Legal Action Against Net Neutrality Advocates Over Comcastroturf.com

Guess that answers my question...albeit in an unexpected way.