F.C.C Votes: Yes on Net Neutrality

This is going to make internet access more expensive for everyone.

Saved the Internet as we know it. And worth the extra cost if there is one (which I'm skeptical about).

MacAllister said:

Personally? I think they've saved the internet as we know it. Internet may be a wee bit more expensive -- but sites like AW can go on without having to pay extra to individual service providers to not dump us in a low-priority ghetto. We frankly couldn't afford to do that.

At least, for the next little while. This fight isn't over.

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Thank you for sharing an example of what might have happened here. Scary stuff. But yeah, I doubt the fight is over.

I say that things are going to get bumpy from here. Maybe a little more expensive as companies have to change their access filters and such, but right now, bumpy.

To me, this is like the initial district court case.
The lawyers are already writing up the appeals, even before the ink dries on the initial ruling.

Yay! Maybe now Verizon will stop throttling me.

Or is that a seperate issue?

It's A Good Day for the Internet.

robeiae said:

This is going to make internet access more expensive for everyone.

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Says you and your unsubstantiated hair-on-fire demagoguery. Wired sees the FCC's ruling as a huge win for the Internet.

Ironically, today’s vote was first set in motion by a series of lawsuits dating back several years, which challenged the FCC’s ability to enforce it’s own net neutrality regulations. Last year the latest legal challenge ended when a D.C. court ruled in Verizon’s favor, saying that the way that the FCC had classified internet services didn’t give it the right to enforce net neutrality.

A year ago, Chairman Wheeler said that the FCC could find a new way to enforce net neutrality without the Title II designation. But in November, the man who appointed wheeler, President Barack Obama, called for Title II. In retrospect, that made today’s vote inevitable, although Wheeler said today that he was looking at the Title II option months before Obama’s statement.

Service providers are worried because, in theory at least, Title II now gives the FCC the authority to set rates in the cable industry, and to regulate the back-end of the internet—where service providers have recently begun charging content providers, such as Netflix, fees to host their content in their own data centers, a practice that is essential to smooth movie-streaming . The Commission has taken pains to say that it won’t regulate rates, but that it will ensure that nobody’s internet traffic is blocked or unfairly prioritized by service providers.

“It is a historic day in the history of the Internet,” said the man who coined the term “net neutrality,” Columbia University professor Tim Wu in an emailed statement. “Net neutrality, long in existence as a principle, has been codified in a way that will likely survive court scrutiny. More generally, this marks the beginning of an entirely new era of how communications are regulated in the United States.”

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But since we do have Republicans setting the agenda in Washington, the fight isn't over yet. It's only moved into a new arena.

We've long known that Congress could intervene in this whole process. That could be a good thing for the open internet, but it looks like it's going to be a bad thing. Republicans in Congress have hinted at such an outcome. Alarmists like Ted Cruz have called the FCC's new rules "Obamacare for the internet," a take that's not only dumb but also dangerous. Others say that the government is going to start setting the price for internet service. This is not true.

Take bad boy Fred Upton, for instance. Upton—who holds personal investments in AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon—has introduced legislation that prohibit things like paid prioritization but also eliminate the agency's authority to regulate internet service providers. This is a dangerous thing for these net neutrality rules, again, because in the 2011 Verizon lawsuit that killed the FCC's old net neutrality rules, a judge ruled that the agency overstepped its authority. "A legislative answer to the net neutrality question will finally put to rest years of litigation and uncertainty," Upton said recently.

Upton's contemporaries have talked up the court challenges, too. Texas Republican Joe Barton calls the new rules "net nonsense." (Very cute, Joe.) At a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, Barton run his mouth about the FCC's new rules. "It's not going to work," he said. "It is going to be tested in court and it's going to fail in court."

Of course, this remains to be seen. The rules will be challenged in court, and Congress will consider Upton's legislation. That's a little bit anxiety-inducing if you love the internet.

So, like we've said before, it's not quite time for the we-saved-the-internet parade. It's definitely time to take a deep breath and accept the fact that things are heading in the right direction. Challenges abound. But we're on a good path to a better internet. Finally.

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nighttimer said:

Says you and your unsubstantiated hair-on-fire demagoguery.

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But "saving the internet as we know it" has been totally substantiated, right?

Perhaps this move will also solve global climate change and hasten the acceptance of Obamacare, as well.

Regardless, saying that internet access will cost more is hardly "hair-on-fire" stuff. And I question the idea that this move by the FCC is saving anything. What it's doing is changing the internet as we know it. That could be a good thing, it could be a bad thing, it could be both good and bad.

Because the internet "as we know it" has never been subjected to the kind of controls by the FCC that it can be subjected to now. In the moment, that may not mean much at all. And it may force some companies to stop playing favorites with speeds.

But what we have here in the longer run is whole other ball game. And regulating the internet like a utility--via an act from 1934--isn't a particularly smart move, imo.

Worse, what we also have is a series of new opportunities for the Federal Government to levy new taxes/fess. Congress can tell the FCC to go screw itself now that the door is open.

Then there's the idea that this move is good for the little guy. I disagree. It's going to suck for the little guy. More government involvement means more crap to wade through. And it costs money and time to do that, especially when rules are subject to change. Right now, the big companies are worried about all this. But I'd bet that a couple of years down the road, there will be fewer players in the game, not more. This move also won't spur innovation on in the least. Exactly the opposite, imo. The name of the game will be to meet FCC requirments, no more, no less.


I think there are some serious problems to address in internet-land, especially as regards varying speeds for different sites. But I think that's an issue that could have been tackled as an issue, not as a justification for yet another sweeping "big fix."

Btw, here's the summary of the FCC's order: http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adopts-strong-sustainable-rules-protect-open-internet

Links to statements of board members are there, as well.

The full order isn't availble yet.

No one has asked the tough question: how will this effect porn streaming?

Shadow_Ferret said:

No one has asked the tough question: how will this effect porn streaming?

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In DC? Probably not at all.

Will there be new taxes and fees associated with these new regulations?

Does this mean streaming will slow down? Or speed up?

I'm looking for the negatives and positives of this.

Verizon expresses its displeasure with Morse Code!

robeiae said:

...FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler saying the policy will ensure "that no one — whether government or corporate — should control free open access to the Internet."

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Whoa - isn't the FCC part of the Government???

robeiae said:

Btw, here's the summary of the FCC's order: http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adopts-strong-sustainable-rules-protect-open-internet

Links to statements of board members are there, as well.

The full order isn't availble yet.

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They had to pass the full order so that we can find out what's in it.

robeiae said:

In DC? Probably not at all.

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atombaby said:

Will there be new taxes and fees associated with these new regulations?

Does this mean streaming will slow down? Or speed up?

I'm looking for the negatives and positives of this.

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Of course not - people who create and enforce new regulations do it for fun and for free.

AZ_Dawn said:

Verizon expresses its displeasure with Morse Code!

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Hmm, I think that should say Verizon expresses its displeasure USING Morse Code.

The full order of, if I saw correctly, hundreds of pages that were signed. It's that like hiding the body of the contract and asking them to sign here on the bottom, but you can't read the contract?

What's next on the agenda?

I wonder if it makes meshnets illegal.

I am much happier with the government enforcing net neutrality than I would be with Comcast and Verizon being able to do whatever the hell they want.

clintl said:

I am much happier with the government enforcing net neutrality than I would be with Comcast and Verizon being able to do whatever the hell they want.

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The precise and correct response.

caw

The best responses to this are the ones saying it's stifle innovation and remove the companies' desire to improve their infrastructure. Because Comcast not being able to charge Netflix, Google, and a lot of smaller sites extra to not be completely useless on their network completely takes away any ability they have to make their product better.

Shadow Dragon said:

Because Comcast not being able to charge Netflix, Google, and a lot of smaller sites extra to not be completely useless on their network completely takes away any ability they have to make their product better.

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I can't even begin to parse this sentence, let alone comprehend its meaning.

caw

I saw one blog post in opposition to NN that basically said "well, why should some pimply teen with a blog have the same access to an audience as a major media player such as the Weekly Standard?"

But I think a large portion of the opposition are people who don't realize that the regulations simply make mandatory the way the internet has been operating all along. It's much easier to support the status quo than to oppose it; I suspect most people on both sides think they're supporting the status quo, or at least a smaller change to the status quo than what the other ones say. And some of these people on both sides are right.

That's all the sensible opposition. I don't really worry about the other kind.

calieber said:

the regulations simply make mandatory the way the internet has been operating all along.

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Pretty much the point, isn't it? The Internet, in the opinion of the vast majority of people, has been one of the biggest effing cultural/technological successes of the past quarter-century. BIG TECH wants badly to vampirize it. They'll continue to want that, and to work for it, but at least for the moment, the FCC said "Take your fangs back to your coffins and await the dawn."

caw