FCC Chairman: This Is How We Will Ensure Net Neutrality
wired.com
wired.com
Using this authority, I am submitting to my colleagues the strongest
open internet protections ever proposed by the FCC. These enforceable,
bright-line rules will ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and
throttling of lawful content and services. I propose to fully
apply—for the first time ever—those bright-line rules to mobile
broadband. My proposal assures the rights of internet users to go
where they want, when they want, and the rights of innovators to
introduce new products without asking anyone’s permission.
I know it's early but this is a great step forward.
Again, I'm paraphrasing. And I had no idea (at the time) whether he was being sincere, or just really slick in his deflections. As of today it's looking like the former, and not the latter.
See also: all modern politics.
The people I consider most dangerous to the public in regulatory positions aren't the ones who actively aim to undermine. They're they ones who just have such a strong sympathy with the regulated that they can't conceive of other ways to look at it.
Good regulation requires both deep respect and deep skepticism. Think, for example, of people who make sure restaurant kitchens are safe for the public. They have to respect the purpose of restaurants and the people who run them; otherwise they'll be ineffectively fussy or crabby. But their whole job is to never let those people slide. So as much as they understand and empathize with how hard and expensive it is run a restaurant, they still have to be willing to take the consumer's side say, "Yes, it's expensive, but you still have to throw out that $2k of meat." And mean it.
That's because much of the tech press prefers sensationalism to get clicks over accurate reporting to inform readers. Here's a comment I made last week on another forum that covers what the tech press should have told us about Wheeler a long time ago, but didn't.
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It's important to note when he worked for cable. Much of the reporting in the tech press gives the impression he came straight from some high paid lobbying job with Comcast to the FCC.
In reality, he didn't work for any one cable company, but rather was the president of their main trade association, and that was from 1976 to 1984. That was a time when the internet was still just for military, defense contractors, and major computer science and engineering universities. There were around 1000 computers on the internet then. The opening up of the internet for civilians, starting with the creation of NSFNet by the National Science Foundation, wasn't to start until 1985, and it wasn't until 1992 that the web was released.
So when he was a cable guy, it was all about television. Cable as an industry was also much smaller than it is now, and it was divided among many more companies. They were the upstarts, challenging the big broadcasters. Being pro-cable was arguably being pro-consumer.
From 1992 to 2004, he was president of CTIA, the main cellular trade group. By then, the public internet was well under way, but it was mostly wired. Internet on phones was available, but it was more of a novelty or an expensive luxury, with voice and text being the main interest most people had in cellular. CTIA lobbied, of course, but they also had a major role in setting technology standards. Wheeler represented the industry in discussions with the FCC to draft the rules that we now have for cellular voice, which in retrospect worked out well (and are the basis for the Title II proposal he's expected to reveal).
It's also important to note that cell phones in 1992, when he joined CTIA, were not nearly as common as they are today. There was much less infrastructure in place, and you paid by the minute. They were past the point where you'd stare openly in wonder if you saw someone with one, but still were something you had to work to find a good reason to justify their purchase.
The key thing to note here is that when he has worked as a sort-of lobbyist (I say "sort-of" because both times he was president of a trade association that had lobbying as just one function), it was for industries that were young and had a lot of promise to bring great things to consumers, and his work for those industries as far as I've been able to tell helped consumers, and the customers of those industries were better off when he left than when he started.
He seems to basically be a telecom policy nerd. Heck, he even does telecom stuff in his non-professional capacity. Only a telecom nerd would write a 250 page book called "Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War" [1].
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Lincolns-T-Mails-Abraham-Telegraph/...
s/tech press/press/
Wheeler has been one of the three members of the FCC favoring pro-neutrality regulation for quite some time. Its true that he recently came around to the view that Title II was an appropriate vehicle for that regulation, but he's been a supporter of FCC action to enforce neutrality principles for quite some time, as demonstrated by the previous Open Internet Report and Order, the last NPRM in which he took one of the two paths toward enforcing those principles laid out in the court decision striking down the old Open Internet Report and Order, and his new move to use Title II, the other path laid out in that court decision.
i work for a smaller cable company and it has been getting very deep lately.
sad thing is management doesn't seem to get that the grunts don't care. we never profit from the monopolies. every year we get some bs excuse why we won't be getting a raise this year even though reading the quarterly earnings and know what were spending on upgrades and know there is a lot left over that goes somewhere.
knowing how high the margins are in the industry, how little they pay, how lean things are already run its going to get bad.
if competition is somehow injected into the market and they are happy with a fraction of what the incumbents are currently enjoying would be devastating. there is very little left to cut at the bottom, and those at the top can't possibly be expected to not get their rockstar paydays.
what also could happen is the exodus of employees from existing cable companies to the new ones that would sprout up. even though the grass isn't always greener somewhere else, it won't stop those from finally having a choice.
don't get me wrong. I have zero problem with someone making a 100 million a year, but only when that comes after everyone from push broom and toilet brush to company car and private jet are all paid the highest for their position for a company that size. unfortunately almost everywhere you can go that isn't the case.
I've heard a lot of discussion how making ISPs a utility would just entrench the monopolies even further... what od you think?
Maybe you should have a problem with it.
I get what you're saying, that there may not be anything immoral about being extravagantly compensated, and in principle I agree with that. However, there is also something to be said for the overwhelming amount of political power that such wealth brings.
It may be that we want to avoid such concentrations of wealth not out of a sense of fairness, but to keep people from hijacking our democracy.
Do you really want the technology sector to end up looking like the healthcare system or the state run education system? Everything government touches turns to crap.
To believe that government regulation with make anything better is not very intelligent.
By that extremely simplistic logic, we should have no laws at all.
Most likely, both.
What transaction are you referring to not being voluntary? Transactions in the economic sense are by definition voluntary. Without a monopoly on law, people hire courts of their choosing to settle disputes. They are not compelled by a third party to settle disputes in the third party's court. Most importantly, they are not compelled by a third party to use the third party's law. They may each have their own laws even.
More about polycentric law: http://www.tomwbell.com/writings/JurisPoly.html
No, they aren't, which is why we distinguish with the term "free market" the platonic ideal of an economic situation in which all transactions are fully voluntary.
> They may each have their own laws even.
If each party may have their own laws, those aren't actually "laws" in any meaningful sense.
> More about polycentric law: http://www.tomwbell.com/writings/JurisPoly.html
I find it interesting that that article highlights exactly why the historical systems described as polycentric legal systems (which are not, in any meaningful sense, a "free market of laws") tend toward natural monopoly and solidification into state law, apparently without realizing it, stating that defectors from such a system "would then have to either accept the jurisdiction of its courts or suffer ostracism from the community of law-abiding folk."
Of course, that effect not only applies to accepting some of the available choices in a polycentric system, but also accepting both the particular "law" (a rule system that becomes binding retroactively only after a dispute occurs and a forum chosen is hardly "law" in the normal sense, but...) and particular courts preferred by the most powerful groups in the community.
Huh? Law is enforced whether polycentric or monopolistic. I don't see what that has to do with the evolution of monopolistic statutory law.
I'd rather have Google, et al, provide a market solution to this, by aggressively expanding Fiber without regulation, and laying down a secondary network to compete with Comcast/Time Warner. As it stands this is starting to look more and more like an attempt to maintain power for the traditional shitty telecoms, while also taking a slice out of Google's pie.
Look outside your country and those things are very good successes.
For some reason this attitude has not led to effective, efficient governance.
An unusually large segment of the public is paying attention to this. To kill it will require actively voting in favor of a bill. Seems like a big career risk for a politician.
There is also the separate-but-related political reality that the Internet, as a vehicle of basically free information, is opposed by those who depend upon their influence over the flow of news and information in order to maintain political and economic power. This policy shift will make it more difficult for them to keep their influence, and will therefore be fought against by very powerful people who face a long-term threat from its continuation.
Satisfied? :)
A lot of the big proponents of net neutrality -- including specifically proponents of the FCC using Title II -- are also big corporations, and will inevitably file briefs supporting the FCC action (which they lobbied for.)
"Corporation-friendly" matters less when there are big corporations on both sides.
"Business-friendly" is politically coded language for favoring capital holders over employees, consumers, and unrelated but affected individuals.
Actually, I think the predominant interests -- at least, in terms of concentrated money devoted to lobbying and overall political pull -- for net neutrality comes from big online service and content providers that want to continue to be able to operate profitably rather than having the oligopoly of broadband ISPs engaging in rent-seeking behavior that extracts the profits from those service and content providers and uses the extracted profits to develop services that compete with them, and then outright blocks the other content/service providers to protect the ISPs own competing services.
> The defeat of net neutrality is still a corporate interest.
The interests of Google, Facebook, Netflix, et al., are as much corporate interests as those of Verizon, AT&T, etc.
> "Business-friendly" is politically coded language for favoring capital holders over employees, consumers, and unrelated but affected individuals.
Sure, but net neutrality isn't an issue that puts capital holders, in general, on one side and employees, consumers, on the other.
>> There is also the separate-but-related political reality that the Internet, as a vehicle of basically free information, is opposed by those who depend upon their influence over the flow of news and information in order to maintain political and economic power. This policy shift will make it more difficult for them to keep their influence, and will therefore be fought against by very powerful people who face a long-term threat from its continuation.
Sorry couldn't resist this quote. Any one else see the similarities with MGS2?
Someone who actually makes sense.
These enforceable, bright-line rules will ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services
I'd be very cautious about what shaping we permit to our network traffic. Laws are fickle, knowledge is power.
All he is saying is, if an ISP gets a court order, that they can then block access to content like they do now, and the FCC won't go after them as a result.
It isn't a new power or an expansion, just continuing the current situation that exists.
I feel like this is still a leap forward on net, and we should be happy for it.
In the UK we have the IWF blocklist for CP, plus the Pirate Bay block, and gradually expanding inadequately controlled currently optional "adult content" filters. The slippery slope is real, but has to be fought at a halfway point.
With the rules, ISPs cannot block lawful content without consequence, but the rules don't prohibit blocking unlawful content. OTOH, if there are penalties for block lawful content, simple prudence will also lead ISPs to restraint in efforts to block unlawful content absent other rules mandating such blocking, lest they inadvertently block lawful content and are penalized for so doing.
My concern is, how are they going to define lawful content and services, and more importantly, how are they going to determine it in practice? It can easily translate into some heavy handed surveillance systems which analyze the lawfulness of the whole network.
So some push should be done in the opposite direction.
Better examples would be the DMCA, the FBI's seizure of child porn-related domains, the seizure of Silk Road, etc. Those things are actually censorship. Having CC processors cut off Wikileaks was also slightly indirect censorship but still pretty much censorship.
We already do these things, and under the 1st amendment, there are very few things that don't fit under "lawful content" so I doubt this would change much.
They are close kin. Censorship uses surveillance to find what to censor. That's why it's not accidental that DRM cartels are so into police state mentality. These issues essentially converge.
> particularly when the surveillance is supposed to be a secret.
What difference does it make if it's a secret or not if it's there? Both are a problem when they are massive. Secret surveillance is even worse, since it makes people think that there is no problem with it. Compare it to obtrusive and non obtrusive DRM. People are easily annoyed by the former, but often are often OK with the later because they don't feel discomfort. So the second is actually much worse.
I disagree. People under surveillance self-censor. A recent study showed journalists censoring themselves in response to surveillance (i.e., their communications). Another showed that people's searches on search engines (or maybe just Google) changed after revelations of government surveillance.
It's not an accident. It's a well-known phenomenon and a method of intimidation.
(Sorry I don't have time to look up the details of those studies.)
Only if we ignore the chilling effect that surveillance has on the First Amendment.
I understand the NSA is associated with all kinds of serious issues, but it doesn't help us figure anything else out when the subject changes to NSA even when it doesn't really apply.
For example, child porn is an important form of unlawful content that many people do not want to allow. We might decide that the civil liberty issues are so important that we are just going to have to put up with more child porn than we'd have under a more restrictive regime. Or we might not. Either answer would pertain to the question. But end surveillance now, NSA, it's all the same rah-rah doesn't pertain to the question.
No, the question was, should we accept surveillance as acceptable way to prevent unlawful content. And my answer was that this question is invalid - surveillance is already here, whether you want to accept it or not. If that didn't imply surveillance, what other caution are you talking about then?
"What obligation does law enforcement have to regulate content that you and I, as open-Internet believers, agree is unlawful? Shall we allow illegal content in order to err on the side of caution?"
That question wasn't about surveillance. You keep changing the subject to surveillance, because you're unwilling to address the issue of whether we should allow illegal content.
What obligation does law enforcement have to regulate content? Not surveillance. Not NSA. Law enforcement. obligation.To regulate content.
Show we allow illegal content in order to err on the side of caution? Not should we allow surveillance. Should we allow illegal content. Content. Not surveillance. Stop changing the subject.
> What obligation does law enforcement have to regulate content that you and I, as open-Internet believers, agree is unlawful?
Translation: what obligation does law enforcement has to police Internet with surveillance in order to catch content that we agree is unlawful? Same can be asked about ISPs.
> Shall we allow illegal content in order to err on the side of caution?"
Translation: should we oppose massive surveillance to prevent power abuse even if it will prevent catching unlawful content?
To that I answered, that current surveillance is already abusive, so the question doesn't really start.
They basically just include the word 'lawful' to allow ISPs to block unlawful traffic. Think specifically of DDOS attacks, you wouldn't want to disallow an ISP from blackholing DDOS packets.
But potatolicious's comment about is good.
Since FCC action against Comcast for blocking Bittorrent -- including the idea that Bittorrent, whatever unlawful content might be distributed by that means, was itself not unlawful and that Bittorrent traffic included lawful content -- was one of the starting points of net neutrality regulation at the FCC, I'm pretty sure that Wheeler, the FCC in general, and Comcast are all aware of that.
The difference is that right now if your ISP blocks torrent traffic you have literally no recourse besides going to a competitor (if one exists, which odds are one does not). You are after all not legally entitled to torrent traffic.
The change here is that if an ISP unilaterally starts blocking torrent traffic, you (or more likely, the EFF or similar org) can sue to have torrent traffic declared lawful, after which the ISP is legally bound to open the traffic.
The trick here isn't that ISP shitty behavior will be impossible under the new rules, but rather that there will be more power to the citizenry to combat many categories such shitty behavior.
You do know that that's one of the earliest things the FCC addressed in the "net neutrality" / "open internet" space, even before the first attempt to adopt generally-applicable rules rather than case-by-case enforcement of net neutrality principles?
https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-08-183A1.p...
Actually, once the FCC adopts a no-blocking-lawful-content rule, any alleged violation of that rule is potentially a subject of FCC action, which means that the FCC will, in the first instance, determine all relevant questions, including whether particular content is lawful. They will, of course, look at and apply court precedent and statute law to determine that, but the FCC absolutely will be called on to make that decision.
Those decisions, of course, may be appealed to the court in the same way as any other enforcement action by a regulatory body.
Its not only mobile broadband. It prohibits blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization of lawful content and services for all broadband -- which previous FCC orders and proposals on net neutrality have done for fixed broadband. The part that is distinct about mobile broadband is that this proposal is the first that would apply those rules to mobile as well as fixed broadband.
> will ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services.
the keyword here is lawful. Will all content be lawful unless proven otherwise?
Sure but if the law is vague than the enforcement can be broad or narrow depending on case law and the interpretation of judges.
It is less risky to run a business in an area where the law is more clear cut.
More likely, it would be their burden to do so after blocking, when a violation of the no-blocking-lawful-content rule was alleged.
I was stating that you could see city government trying to get the Uber site blocked to local ISP customers as a way to side-step the court system.
If Uber's service is illegal, the content the site is delivering, insofar as it is solicitation to engage in an illegal exchange, may also be illegal.
It means that actually blocking, throttling, (or, for that matter, paid prioritization, though that will fall afoul of other laws) of unlawful content is not a violation of this particular set of FCC rules.
It has no effect (positive or negative) on the pre-existing ability of ISPs, with or without a third-party request, to block unlawful content. Of course, because it is a federal rule, any local request seeking to block unlawful content that would also (or actually) block lawful content would be preempted by the federal rule prohibiting blocking lawful content, so it would constrain the kinds of actions that could be taken in pursuit of blocking unlawful content. But, in any case, any ability cities would have under this rule to request blocking Uber, etc., would be no more ability than they have without the rule.
That said, I'm really curious how preemption plays into this. For instance, if federal law is silent on the selling of some particular thing, and local law says that selling that thing is a crime, and there's a federal law that e.g. makes it a crime to interfere with "lawful" interstate commerce, and I interfere with you selling that thing, did I commit a federal crime? I can see arguments both ways that make sense to me as a layman, but I'm sure there's a standard answer to this.
In the case of Uber, what might be illegal is purchasing service from them (or them selling it to you). Them telling you about their service, even if it's illegal in your jurisdiction, is protected speech.
Cannabis is currently illegal to possess or purchase in my state (although not for long). It's still legal for me to read High Times or websites selling commercial products that are legal in Colorado. It'd be illegal for me to place an order.
(And if it's permitted under the proposed regulatory environment, it's probably permitted now, too.)
2. an act of congress that diminishes the authority of the FCC would have to be signed by Obama, which he will not do. there is no faction in congress now that has a veto proof majority.
3. there is immense popular support for net neutrality and any action taken by congress against it is likely to lead to immediate and intense political pressure on those members of congress. lets not forget this country is still a democracy (mostly). the congressional representatives act against public interest at their own peril.
There's a little bit of fuzzing on the boundaries, but this issue has been the focus of lots of legislative action since it first became a controversy, and its pretty consistently been a large majority of Republicans opposing FCC action for neutrality and neutrality generally. And, over the years, the partisan alignment has increasingly solidified.
The recent moves have been lobbyist-inspired, though. Sad.
The Federal Communications Commission Open Internet -- the thing the FCC has done addressing what is known in public discourse as "net neutrality" -- principles haven't substantially changed, though details of the approach to advancing them have, and neither the principles nor the implementation approaches have ever included monitoring and censoring conservative blogs. And the GOP has been opposed to FCC regulating non-blocking and non-discrimination for all lawful content by broadband ISPs for years.
You seem to be confusing what is itself a misrepresentation of the Federal Elections Commission -- a completely different agency -- discussions on rules for political ad disclosures in the wake of a 2005 Federal court ruling requiring them not to exempt all internet communication from the scope of "public communication" in their rules with the FCC's Open Internet rules.
(Or perhaps confusing something that was an even bigger misrepresentation of Federal Trade Commission rules on online general advertising disclosures.)
Not entirely. It's a proposal, which must be voted on by the rest of the FCC committee. It's unlikely everyone on the committee will agree 100%, but I'd also contend it's unlikely for this to not pass in and around it's current state.
They'll probably just sue to invalidate it once the FCC finalizes it (they may seek a preliminary injunction preventing enforcement as part of that, as well); there isn't much they can do in the way of delaying it otherwise.
If the GOP wins 2016, however, the future may not be so bright once they install their pro-business people and fix all of this "Socialist" claptrap.
Look at mobile data (exempt from title II) versus "broadband"/cable speeds.
Wheeler actually points to the success of title II on "mobile" while ignoring the fact that it only applied to voice. Meanwhile, all the relevant growth and innovation occurred in data.
I have to say I'ld like to see the "socialist claptrap", feel-good crap, out of here.
Lastly, who thinks the people have a leg to stand on versus the NSA and privacy if the government has more control over the internet?
http://reason.com/blog/2015/02/04/the-bad-argument-behind-th...
Only voice and SMS mattered until 2007(iPhone launch). Title II seemed to work pretty well until then.
>Look at mobile data (exempt from title II) versus "broadband"/cable speeds.
The difference in infrastructure costs makes those two incomparable.
Look, you just suffer under a reality distortion field.
So the areas in which regulated are the ones which stagnated and became dramatically less relevant?
It seems to me like you're suffering the distortion field.
What did you expect? That a robot would read out websites to us?
Innovation like single-gig data caps? Or do you mean innovation like "unlimited data, except no streaming and no hotspots"?
Compared to the voice situation on mobile, or to landline Internet, mobile Internet is garbage. I don't understand what you mean. Heck, IME, 50mbps landline Internet is easier to get than 4G Internet is outside of cities. And the price isn't much better either. I pay $50/mo for 50mbps down for cable Internet, I pay $40/mo for my 2GB capped Verizon Internet which is 4G (sometimes).
Can we please stop trying to make this a "GOP is evil and hates America" and "DEM is right and loves America" thing?
The GOP standpoint is to put policy in place that naturally overtime encourages small business to bring competition to the bigger guys. The problem with this plan is it takes time and people want an immediate result.
That's not "hating america" and it's not "doomsday" if GOP wins in 2016.
Nor is the President a king -- ie. the President has Zero control over what the FCC does. So it really doesn't matter who wins in 2016 since you already have a strongly led GOP congress... who does have power over the FCC.
Whether or not the GOP is generally evil, it certainly seems to be true that their position on net neutrality has been consistently bad and if they're allowed set policy on it, they'll do it in a way that will let carriers interpose themselves as gatekeepers.
>The GOP standpoint is to put policy in place that naturally overtime encourages small business to bring competition to the bigger guys.
That's the rhetoric, anyway. It's less clear how that's likely to fall out of any of their proposed policies.
This isn't a party thing... let's not try to make it one.
The members of the FCC are Democratic and Republican political appointees.
> This isn't a party thing...
Every FCC vote on Open Internet ("net neutrality") rules for the last several years has had a 3-2 divide on party lines (Democrats for Open Internet regs, Republicans against).
How is it not a party thing?
And so are Supreme Court Justices. Once appointed, some future President can't just remove them because he/she disagrees. The President isn't a king.
It's not a party thing. Stop trying to make it one.
And Supreme Court Justices decisions, throughout their careers, on issues that are politically salient at the time of their appointment very closely track the positions of the President that appointed them. While lots of people like to pretend that the judiciary is apolitical and nonpartisan, all the actual evidence is that it is anything but.
> Once appointed, some future President can't just remove them because he/she disagrees.
Right, the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary in general -- while not at all apolitical and nonpartisan -- are still more insulated from partisan politics and the mood current among elected politicians than, say, members of the FCC because they have lifetime tenure rather than 5 year terms. I'm not sure how pointing this out helps your case that the current net neutrality debate, both in the FCC and more generally, is not strongly partisan.
> It's not a party thing.
I'd surely prefer that support for net neutrality -- on the FCC, in Congress, and more generally -- wasn't a strongly partisan issue, but all the actual facts show that it is an issue that is extremely partisan. You can keep repeating "it's not a party thing" all you want, but it won't stop the fact that on the FCC, support for net neutrality regulations has consistently been split with Democrats for and Republicans against, in the Congress, support for the FCC issuing net neutrality regulations, or the Congress adopting strong net neutrality regulations itself, has consistently been strongly tilted to Democrats for and Republicans against (and, conversely, support for legislation explicitly prohibitong the FCC from regulating for neutrality has been strongly tilted to Republicans for, Democrats against.)
It is a party thing, whether you think it should be or not.
The GOP standpoint is to put policy in place that naturally overtime encourages small business to bring competition to the bigger guys.
That's what I hear around election time, but I'm not convinced its supported by their legislative record.
Worth reading in this context Joel Brinkley's "Defining Vision", about the history of broadcast HDTV in the US.
Also, history strongly suggests that the GOP's political rhetoric is a load of dingo's kidneys. Do you honestly believe that stuff? Do you have any corroborating examples? Because the GOP that was in power prior to 2008 pretty much exemplified the opposite strategy.
Other than appointing the commissioners, and exerting both indirect (and, through the use of the veto, potentially direct) influence over legislation which controls the scope of the FCCs regulatory authority, and appointing members of the Federal judiciary who ultimately resolve disputes over the FCCs actions, sure, the President has zero control over what the FCC does.
And for that matter, maybe they don't 'hate America', but it's awfully hard to tell sometimes, what with Sarah Palin's 'Hit List' of abortion doctors, and the keen interest they take in who can and can't get married, and pretty regularly making the poor out to be villains somehow, etc etc. I suppose if you you're only counting white, Christian conservatives, then Republicans don't hate America. Otherwise, it's a tough sell.
But it's still a huge net gain for startups, most of which fall safely on the lawful side of the line.
> In this context, "lawful" is probably...
If I've learned anything about law and politics, its that you can practically toss the context. If it can be twisted, it will be twisted more ways than you can imagine. Something like 90+% of "terrorist" surveillance usage is used for non-violent drug crime and they don't even have to disclose it (if you really push, they'll give you 'parallel reconstruction').
I'm sure at one point, someone in DC said something along the lines of "We will only prevent terrorist activity" (where terrorist is at least related to terrorism... probably...)
Great, we finally get to exercise our freedoms!
> ... enforceable bright-line rules will ban ...
Oh, I see, now the "innovators" just have more regulation they have to deal with. Now they have to ask for ANOTHER entity's permission?
Doesn't sound like they'll need to ask permission since they'll know they won't get it. Are you in favor of these things?
I think reasonable people can disagree, but your positioning of these two statements as being contradictory relies on a complete lack of context to be convincing.
I'm certainly not a big fan of the status quo, but all that's being proposed here is to make a slightly-less evil version of the status quo the ONLY game in town.
(BTW, If I'm quoting a parent comment directly then how can you say there is no context? The parent comment IS the context.)
If you were hoping for last mile unbundling, your comment strongly suggested that you were on the absolute opposite side of the debate regarding regulation.
I personally learned the importance of open networks the
hard way. In the mid-1980s I was president of a startup,
NABU: The Home Computer Network. My company was using new
technology to deliver high-speed data to home computers
over cable television lines....But NABU went broke while
AOL became very successful....While delivering better
service, NABU had to depend on cable television operators
granting access to their systems....The phone network was
open whereas the cable networks were closed. End of story."
The only reason Google accomplished it is by throwing money at the problem and laying new infrastructure, bypassing the existing in most cases. The barrier to entry of a competitor is so high from the infra cost alone.
Modern cable infrastructure is not a big coaxial cable strung along telephone poles. It's often buried fiber with media conversion for a local loop. Either way it costs money to roll out, and where poles are involved there are ongoing leasing fees for those.
This is only part of the infrastructure anyway. You've still got all the routing, switching, media conversion, etc. to make that cable do something useful.
It is in the company's interest to flog that dollar for all it is worth, forever, as a justification to never upgrade and maintain a monopoly so that nobody can force them to reinvest in infrastructure and they can just sit around in maintenance mode, collecting the checks with the minimum possible outlay.
If the government owned the infrastructure outright, we could at least have the discussion about why service is shit, but with this reasoning, "it was expensive to build these cables" permanently shuts down any ability to get upgrades or break local monopolies.
Media conversion? Like taking HD signals, converting them to "standard definition" and putting those on the line too? So you can then charge more for higher quality "HD" signals which are still transcoded to lower bitrates? Yeah, we can do without that stuff.
This is standard terminology: https://www.google.com/search?q=fiber+media+converter
To be frank, your post is a little ridiculous, IMO.
>Like taking HD signals, converting them to "standard definition" and putting those on the line too? So you can then charge more for higher quality "HD" signals which are still transcoded to lower bitrates? Yeah, we can do without that stuff.
The cable company in my town does this. Ostensibly it was to maintain compatibility with CRT/low def. televisions as a convenience to people with obsolete equipment but the scheme persists. It seems to now serve the purpose of allowing them to advertise low prices for this subpar service and then upsell customers to much higher price tiers. Sure, that's a legal tactic, but it probably wouldn't work in a competitive market.
Not to mention all the old wiring in everyone's house, especially in the city.
Oh and if for some reason you actually do decide to invest in infrastructure, you get to fight local, city, county, AND state government for permits, taxes, etc.
Sometimes government good, sometimes government bad. Haha.
The cable networks are still closed.
The latter IMO is a lot less fair, even though my personal experience is that I had more choices for service when it was done w/ DSL.
Yes, the cable companies have gotten government hand-outs to build out infrastructure, but teasing apart which of that was public and private money (and therefore which would be 'fair' to force open) would be a nightmare.
There's a lot of change packed into this, and I'm sure Wheeler's plan will be to keep the changes and shakeups rolling.
If you look at the bottom of many of the previous Net Neutrality threads, there will be heavily downvoted posts (some of mine included) that Wheeler was previously an entrepreneur who was trying to disrupt traditional service providers, he was a VC who backed truly disruptive companies, and he had already been blocked from implementing very consumer-friendly rules at the FCC -- so he might be not be some mustache-twirling villain.
The ignorant fervor was pretty intense.
Wheeler kept a blog for years about all of his thoughts regarding telecom regulation, but it's much easier to call him a dingo and assume he's evil than it is to do research and develop a true picture of his intentions.
Unfortunately, his blog has lapsed, but some of the posts are still available via Archive.org. Some Good posts;
* Networks are More Important than Nations - https://web.archive.org/web/20110205091739/http://www.mobile...
* How SOP was Undone by SOPA - https://web.archive.org/web/20120625185358/http://www.mobile...
The 2nd is particularly interesting since he explicitly supports the anti-SOPA movement:
The policy matter is not whether copyright holders
should receive recompense for their products (they
should), but whether legislation to protect that right
is aircover to perpetuate old practices at the expense
of new networks. There is no doubt there are honest-to-
God Web pirates operating in China, Russia, and
elsewhere who are stealing copyrighted product. These
pirates should be stopped. But SOPA’s effort to
accomplish this – which also just happened to strengthen
the hand of content companies in other regards – applied
concepts more applicable to the command and control
networks of yesterday than to the open access networks
of today.
The power of the Internet is its lack of centralized
control. Its distributed architecture means the network
functions at the edge rather than at a central point.
That edge activity, in turn, creates what the SOPA
supporters were trying to constrain: access they can’t
control. While its goal of stopping piracy is laudable
and important, SOPA’s practical effect was to
restructure through law the functionality of the
Internet.
I think I fell for it myself and was pleasantly surprised when this announcement came. Now I know I had let a lack of diligence had prevented me from seeing that this announcement may have been far more likely than I ever thought.
It's easy to be swept up by the resounding chorus of comments here sometimes.
>It's ignorant to seize on one line of a political appointee's 40-year resume
People are often defined by their most recent accomplishment(s) (unless a worse one can be dredged up from the past).
I try to keep myself informed of current events, but I'm not always as successful as I would like, and I've not got unlimited time to go digging through the Internet Archive to find and read Wheeler's old blog posts (of which I was unaware). If they were so central to Wheeler's philosophy why did they not receive more recent attention?
>it's clear the blind Wheeler hate was completely unfounded.
If to you, "blind Wheeler hate" == skepticism, then it's not clear at all, but I am starting to warm up to the guy. Thanks for the blog links.
PS, I also doubt that we'd be better off today without the enormous furore over FCC internet regulation.
I don't mean to imply that you're a lazy cynic, just that the easily digestible stories on HN (especially political ones) are often lazy and cynical.
"OMG, I just saw John Oliver, did you know Wheeler was a lobbyist for the cable companies!?"
vs.
Acknowledging that he was a lobbyist for the NCTA during the Jimmy Carter administration and realizing that his more recent lobbying work was for the CTIA - (Still over 10 years ago) - where they were trying to free up more spectrum to enable wireless broadband.
For the past 10 years, he worked with a VC firm that invested hundreds of millions into tech companies. Wheeler personally sat on the board of Earthlink, InPhonic, and Telephia...
I'm not sure why the narrative was so far off the mark but I gave up trying to correct it a long time ago. Rest assured though, there at least a few people that weren't surprised whatsoever about Wheeler's pro-consumer actions.
HN isn't perfectly balanced -- there are certainly issues where the one-side or the other has substantially more support on HN. But its far from an echo chamber.
The internet wouldn’t have emerged as it did, for instance,
if the FCC hadn’t mandated open access for network equipment
in the late 1960s. Before then, AT&T prohibited anyone
from attaching non-AT&T equipment to the network.
Yes, the last-mile is a natural monopoly, but there's a wide gulf of possible solutions between "Let AT&T kill all competitors" as they have been for the last century and "Have the FCC regulate competition into existence" as they did in 1996 [1]. Neither of those extremes worked, and to the extent that this policy seems to understand that, it looks like a good outcome. The line about "no rate regulation, no tariffs, no last-mile unbundling" is especially promising in this regard.
However, the proof is in the pudding, and I think we have yet to see an FCC that is truly effective in inspiring local broadband competition through regulatory policies.
[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsbury_Commitment
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996
Also all of these things will never exist independently of each other. If we had an anarcho-syndicalist system, we'd be complaining about the inability to use omnidirectional antennas effectively because of all of the interference of the airwaves, possibly...
1) The problem this fixes is largely non-existent today. The threat of fast and slow-lanes is one I've yet to experience.
2) Opening the door for more internet regulation seems risky. At first, things may go swimmingly, but I suspect regulatory capture will creep up on this industry, just as it has so many others. You may trust Obama and the current FCC head, but if and when the next Nixon comes to power, will you be as comfortable with his appointee?
3) The language "lawful content and services" seems like the kind of opening that could be the death of services like Bit Torrent or Tor.
4) Holding up the old telephonic lines as having been improved by regulation seems specious. In fact, the telephone system has been frozen in amber for decades. Perhaps overregulation is part of the reason we get our high-speed internet via the much less regulated cable lines and not phone lines.
http://www.cnet.com/news/comcast-really-does-block-bittorren...
http://time.com/80192/netflix-verizon-paid-peering-agreement...
Verizon is already throttling Youtube and Netflix traffic because the content providers refuse to pay extra for normal delivery.
> 2) Opening the door for more internet regulation seems like a bad idea. At first, things may go swimmingly, but I suspect regulatory capture will creep up on this industry, just as it has so many others. You may trust Obama, but if and when the next Nixon comes to power, will you be as comfortable with the executive's increased authority over the internet via the FCC?
The FCC already has the authority to regulate the internet. It's trying to establish rules within the authority granted to it by the US Congress.
> 3) The language "lawful content and services" to me seems concerning. Could this be the death of bit torrent?
This does seem concerning, but there's some discussion up the thread about what this likely means. We won't know for sure though until the actual proposed rules are announced. This is more of "announcing an announcement" than anything else.
You can read their peering rules here: http://www.verizonenterprise.com/terms/peering/
We can argue that it is just semantics but it is more in-depth than "throttling."
The requirement that traffic be balanced is nonsensical. In a logical sense, all packets in a connection should be 'billed' to the initiator. Raw data rates are a terrible proxy for this, and shouldn't be used at all. So in the case of Netflix, Verizon is responsible for about 99% of the traffic and the only party that should even think about charging for the interconnect is Netflix.
Is there anything else that's a problem?
However I'm not sure where you get the 99% or anything like that. If I'm Verizon and I own the last mile to the eyeballs you want then I can set my policies to benefit me, which they have. However they aren't throttling and Title II will do nothing about the peering issue or the policies they have set around it.
Technically. The problem is that setting the rules so that some providers saturate is functionally equivalent to throttling arbitrarily.
Verizon is setting these rules in a way that can't be reasonably complied with, so they are fully responsible for the outcome. It shouldn't be phrased as if it justifies anything.
Thanks for the downvote.
I'm not a networking expert so someone please correct me if I'm wrong here, but those peering terms also specify shortest-exit routing, in which case the 1.8:1 traffic ratio is necessary to ensure that one peer does not do dramatically more "work" in terms of bit-miles.
It seems like Netflix and a consumer ISP are never going to be able to peer with traffic ratio requirements. If the consumer ISP offered best-exit routed settlement-free peering options, though, Netflix could easily comply.
It is my impression that a consumer ISPs refusing to offer settlement-free peering with a best-exit routing policy is apparently charging for access to its customers, not charging for access to its network.
http://lifehacker.com/5933152/the-right-to-tether-what-the-v...
Obama on the other hand has failed to turn around most of the worst Bush era policies. Not to belittle his archievements with health care (which Nixon also tried to pass).
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shut-up/oklfoejikk...
Basically hides the comments on every site unless you enable them. It's a little aggressive and sometimes if you notice something weird on a site you just need to disable it for that site.
But it honestly improves the entire internet experience exponentially.
127.0.0.1 disqus.com
Like you said, Rule #1. I suppose the Wired readers savvy enough to have an interesting voice on this issue are also smart enough to not voice it there.
For context, I'm neither for nor against Obama - I just think people who take a position of "It's an idea from the other political party so I don't like it" cause more harm than good. (See belief in vaccination, evolution, and global warming as other examples)
I was speaking specifically about the issues mentioned in the parent post. Namely vaccination[1], evolution, and climate change. The Republican positions are objectively wrong on these issues. Projecting from there, it's not unreasonable to assume they're wrong on other issues that I know less about.
To be more explicit, I was disagreeing with this:
> I just think people who take a position of "It's an idea from the other political party so I don't like it" cause more harm than good.
If one party is consistently wrong on many, many obvious issues, I don't see much of an issue with dismissing their views on more nuanced issues. If you can't figure out something relatively simple like evolution, I don't have much faith in you figuring out national economics.
[1] See Christie and Rand Paul's recent statements
- Shortening unemployment insurance from 99 weeks did help nudge some folks back to work. - Encouraging housing development is better than rent control.
Perhaps I just agree with the Democrats more on hard science, and the Republicans on the dismal science. The latter is (of course!) less amendable to hard and fast truths.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula...
Perhaps we should take a more subjective look at comments on Hacker News and ask ourselves if a genuine 'hacker' (by PG definition or otherwise) would applaud new regulations for the internet.
> I see the telecoms have sent their minions to the comment sections.
Do you folks always avoid the comments section? Obviously not, because you're here :) and the idea that this is such a generalized "Internet Rule" is contradictory to being here. If you're disgusted by other people's abrasive comments (on Wired or wherever else you're avoiding the comments section), can you offer your own respectable perspectives and steer the conversation that way? Or have you completely given up? A reasonable (but unfortunate) situation. I dislike the hair-on-fire knee-jerk screaming too. I hope we can change that.
I wrote more about this[1] after thinking a while about Jeff Atwood's piece[2].
[1] http://www.netinstructions.com/please-read-the-comments-sect... [2] http://blog.codinghorror.com/please-read-the-comments/
As such, those comments are liable to attract a wider variety of people, some of whom are crazy, some of whom are trolling, some of whom are trying to push some arbitrary agenda. Here, there are rules and a culture that (it seems to me) rewards interesting conversations.
Plus, most random commenters are anonymous, whereas most people on HN are pseudonymous. I consider what I write here much more strongly than what I write on reddit, or 4chan.
It's like everyone's forgetting that this has to be submitted and voted on internally, and then billion dollar giants will start attacking, and then Republicans will start attacking. Considering all of that, you'd need to be pretty optimistic to continue with the celebration.
The next step is for the FCC to vote on the proposal Wheeler is submitting and officially propose the rules (depending on whether they choose to do so as an Notice of Proposed Rulemaking or as a Interim Final Rule with Comment Period, there may or may not be a separate action after that needed to actually put the rules into effect; since this is the action in response to comment on a previous NPRM, I don't think they need to go the NPRM route again, but I think they can choose to, but my knowledge of the detailed requirements of federal administrative procedure is somewhat fuzzy.)
> I also wonder how long it will take for the reclassification to become enforceable, and how long the existing companies will have to "become compliant".
I think that the effective dates would be specified in the proposal, so when the FCC officially issues it we'll know.
> tom wheeler, seriously, it would be a great thing if you and everyone like you contracted ebola and died a horrible death.
This is like giving the entire U.S. population free pizza for a year, and half the population complaining because there's cheese on it.
And no I can't explain you their argument because whenever I do so I get downvoted.
The government wants their hands on all means of communication. The FCC basically shunned the public from using radio waves and TV waves. Now they're going to shun us away from the internet. The same organization, the FCC, will do this as they previously did with other means of communication, and you cheerleaders are being fooled and don't even know it. Not only that but you criticize those who see this for the fascism it is. It must be great to be ignorant because you can even attack those who read history and think you're coming out on top.
On the web anyone can make a website and get popular enough to compete with the big players.
Can you make an OTA TV channel (whatever the hell that is) that will get more viewers than Fox News?
I could give you examples of mom and pop websites that surpass big corp websites in views. Can you give me an example of a TV or Radio station that surpasses the big 3 (4? 5?) in views?
The answer is no. The reason is because OTA and amateur radio and television are a different stratum than "regular channels".
But online, all websites are in the same stratum. Until the FCC gets on it. I hope this clarifies my point.
It is hard to understand an argument when none is presented. How is this fascism if the FCC has the power to do this already under existing law? How had the FCC "shunned the public from using radio waves and TV waves"? Keep in mind all countries manage radio transmissions because they have a vested interest in doing so. Shared mediums that everyone tries to use but cannot because of no management isn't much help. Think back to the LTE satellite internet company that had blocks right by satellite communication for GPS. You're saying its bad that we don't allow companies to run rampant over airwaves so that GPS no longer works? I hope not otherwise your argument is indeed shit and wrong.
“Rewarding campaign contributors is par for the course in Washington, of course. Usually, though, the prizes are ambassadorships or appointments to obscure boards rather than the chairmanship of a big federal regulatory agency. That’s another thing that makes Wheeler’s appointment look like just the sort of Washington inside job that Obama used to decry as a candidate. […] Perhaps the best that can be said about his nomination is that, assuming he’s confirmed, he’ll have an incentive to demonstrate that he isn’t a patsy for the companies he used to lobby for.”
In Romney's own words:
It is not the role of any government to “manage” the
Internet. The Internet has flourished precisely because
government has so far refrained from regulating this
dynamic and essential cornerstone of our economy. I
would rely primarily on innovation and market forces,
not bureaucrats, to shape the Internet and maximize its
economic, social and scientific value.
Specifically, the FCC’s “Net Neutrality” regulation
represents an Obama campaign promise fulfilled on behalf
of certain special interests, but ultimately a “solution”
in search of a problem. The government has now interjected
itself in how networks will be constructed and managed,
picked winners and losers in the marketplace, and
determined how consumers will receive access to tomorrow’s
new applications and services. The Obama Administration’s
overreaching has replaced innovators and investors with
Washington bureaucrats.
"Local loop unbundling (LLU or LLUB) is the regulatory process of allowing multiple telecommunications operators to use connections from the telephone exchange to the customer's premises."
I still dream of a non-profit or municipal cable plant, serviced by multiple ISPs. The last mile is a natural monopoly, and we need to stop pretending otherwise.
This net neutrality victory is something to celebrate, but we need to keep the bigger goals in mind for this to not be suboptimal longer term.
Worse, the way title II is written, the FCC can only unbundle the local telephone company. So the cable network that provide broadcand service to most Americans can't be unbundled at all.
Last mile unbundling only works when you have a very strictly regulated monopoly providing the network.
Having said that, it seems like a lot of people here still stick to the big named carriers like Rogers and Bell because of inertia, comfort-levels with service or lack of awareness of third party providers. The cost savings (even with some recent rate increases) of using third party internet access over cable or phone line here are actually quite substantial when you factor in the liberal bandwidth caps you get with TPIA providers.
The more ethical approach would be to lobby Congress to pass laws that override the FCC's decision. Republicans don't have a veto-proof majority, but that's never stopped anyone before - tricks with riders unrelated to the main bill can effectively neuter the veto power.
The members of the FCC are all political appointees of elected officials, and, like most regulators, two of their primary future employment prospects after their term ends are (1) further political appointments, and (2) employment, often as lobbyists, in the industry regulated by the regulatory body they currently serve on.
So, while they may not be amenable directly to the same kind of campaign-support influence that elected officials are, there are good reason to think that lobbyists can influence them in ways beyond the persuasiveness of their substantive policy arguments.
I really wish they would acknowledge that this type of decision isn't just "for Americans". Pretty much the entire world was watching to see how they were going to handle it.
Translation?
These regulations that are part of the law are all going to be removed as part of a process called "forebearance", where the FCC can basically not enforce those parts if they feel it would be contrary to their overarching goal of increased broadband adoption in the country.
So does this mean that the FCC will force Comcast to allow competition to operate on the existing last mile of cable for broadband?
These things are bad, which is why the FCC is saying it will not apply these provisions. For example, even today most municipalities set a regulated rate for basic cable service. It averages about $20/month nationwide, and doesn't come close to covering the cost of actually building a modern cable network out to a neighborhood.
Unbundling kills investment into the network, because why spend billions of dollars on infrastructure that you'll have to lease out at wholesale prices to your competitors?[1]
My theory is that unbundling is what killed DSL as a competitor to cable here in the U.S. FTTN has been quite successful in the U.K.,[2] as a gradual scheme for building fiber further into the network, with a last-hop of VDSL that can get faster as it gets shorter. There has been little FTTN deployment here in the U.S., because there's just no way for telcos to recoup the billions of dollars spent on fiber if they're forced to lease the VDSL at the other end to competitors for a song.
[1] See this Brookings Institute (not exactly a conservative hotbed) analysis, which calls the U.S. experiment with unbundling "disastrous" and concludes that it reduces capital investigate. http://www.pff.org/events/eventpowerpoints/022207BrusselsCom....
[2] Unbundling is part of the strategy in the U.K. too, but it's structured so that the prices BT charges to competitors are guaranteed to generate a substantial profit.
I agree that it is wise to be wary of regulation in this case--but honestly, I think it's time we at least experiment. The market and regulatory forces at play have basically forced themselves into this position.
You can't legislate-away economics. If you make cable and fiber networks into an unattractive investment, nobody will invest in them, and they'll go on life-support just like the phone network. Cable companies will pivot to content, like Comcast is already doing with its purchase of NBC. The vacuum won't be filled, because at the end of the day no VC is going to put up billions of dollars to eke out shit returns on a heavily-regulated service.
What was the organization usually tasked with public goods, again?
The way we got the buildout of the telephone networks was the creation of the AT&T monopoly by the government, and they took their job seriously. An alternate approach would be nationalizing it and forcing the government to take care of it.
Free market isn't likely to fix the problem.
What I have a hard time understanding is your implied argument here: that by forcing a bundle on consumers that includes a high-margin product (cable TV) as well as a low-margin one (broadband), we're doing those consumers a favor. How do I benefit from a subsidized broadband service if I also have to participate in the over-priced and unwanted service that is allowing the subsidy?
Bundling, in the sense that the FCC is referring to it, is the bundling of internet service with the physical infrastructure it's delivered on.
Un-bundling in this case doesn't mean they have to sell you ESPN without HBO, it means they have to let third-party operators operate on their wiring, switches, and other physical infrastructure for a regulated price.
Given your premise: I can imagine that, with improper price setting by the FCC, this mandatory wholesale infrastructure sharing could be problematic (long-term unprofitable and thus discouraging towards infrastructure investment).
Priced appropriately to the cost of provision of service, however, how does this put the infrastructure builder (Comcast, Level 3, or whomever else) on unfair footing? It just means Comcast the builder has to expect the same rents from Comcast the service provider as it does from Netflix the service provider.
Forgive me for missing the point - I expect you and rayiner understand this far better than I do and I'm trying to catch up.
People who think that either rate-setting in the context of unbundling or in the context of municipal-fiber will be based on a rational analysis of how much revenues will be needed to justify investment are delusional. Rates for everything from electricity to sewage are artificially low, and consequently in many cases utilities are stuck with century-old infrastructure. Public utilities are a big reason the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates we have a multi-trillion backlog of infrastructure capital expenditures.
The folks who think we should upgrade the fiber networks to enable cloud services will have to get in line with the folks who think we should upgrade our power plants and get rid of century-old polluting coal ones, or upgrade our sewage systems so they don't dump raw sewage into rivers when it rains. And they'll be shouted down by the folks complaining that grandma's electric/water/internet bill is too high, and asking "how can you afford fiber service when you can barely feed your family?"
That's an interesting notion, given that market pressure would be to invest as little as one possible can while extracting as much cash as possible. I certainly have the impression that, in Sweden, the public utilities, which were making sure the power grid had adequate excess capacity and good reliability because this infrastructure is in the "national interest" did a much better job in that respect than the market-based solution. There is simply no comparison between power reliability in the U.S. and in Sweden.
It seems like the crux of your argument is that it costs something like $60/month to provide internet service and $20/month on top of that to provide TV service but they charge $50/month for each, so they wouldn't be profitable without the TV service. But who is setting these prices?
Is there some law that requires them to charge a money losing price for internet service and then make it up on TV service? Why don't they just charge a profit-making price for internet service?
[1] In my building, in downtown Baltimore, I can get 50/15 FiOS for $50/month, no cap but no TV service, or triple-play cable at 50/5, capped for $109 per month. Almost everyone subscribes to cable rather than FiOS.
If the ISPs at this point charge a price for just internet service that makes offering that service profitable, what are you expecting customers to do? Go without internet service?
Cost of programming content is $5.2 billion, but video programming generates $10 billion in revenues. Operating income is $4.6 billion. Obviously there's marketing, sales, and operational costs that also go away if you don't have video service. But there's also $1.1 billion in advertising revenue that probably goes away too. And really, the numbers are totally incomplete without looking at capex and depreciation too.
Analysis is similar for Charter, except they're running a net loss straight-up.
"there's just no way for telcos to recoup the billions of dollars spent on fiber if they're forced to..."
The Telco's can't recoup their money AND pay exorbitant salaries to upper management, lobbyists, and still convince wall street that there is "growth potential" quarter over quarter.
If we were just talking about building a network...
The network owner could set the wholesale price at one that is still profitable, no?
Yes. For example $10,000 per month.
I'm not trying to be clever here. The ISPs seemingly don't want to lease out their lines, or else they would probably have done it already. So if we wish to force the ISPs to lease out their lines, we will have to set a maximum price, either explicitly (as a dollar value) or a price that is somehow related to the costs incurred by the ISP.
So then, how did unbundling + price setting negatively impact the expansion of telephone lines?
Now that I'm in the US, I don't see why Comcast can't lease out the last mile to other ISPs for reasonable wholesale rates.
This has been a boon for small-time ISPs but a huge thorn in the side of phone companies like Bell and Telus, who are forced to compete with cable giants that are not playing under the same rules.
"As retail Internet service demand has evolved to higher speeds, the Commission has required the large telephone companies and cable carriers (collectively, the incumbents) to make some of their high-speed access (HSA) services available to competitors to ensure that these services remain subject to competition and thus protect consumers’ interests."
For example, there will be no rate regulation, no tariffs, no last-mile unbundling."Just regulating (Cable and Fiber) under Title II" would have been a far better outcome, as far as I can tell.
Rate regulation and last-mile unbundling are the keys to useful internet access. Without those, 95+% of Americans are still forced to buy internet from Comcast and Verizon, with whatever prices, stipulations, and conditions they decide to enforce.
Certainly, this situation could have turned out far worse. But I don't see it as a win in any significant way. It simply reinforces internet service as a monopoly land-grab business.
The specification of 'lawful content and services' seems a bit ominous to me. Does this imply there may be ways to monitor/limit/restrict internet traffic? To use his example, would this language be used to describe the open phone network?
Read up the history of the FCC. At the time it was also "necessary" to regulate airwaves because of several noble reasons but of course what ends up happening is that now you have to get a license from the government to say something on radio waves.
You will have to get a license to have a website in the future if the FCC has its way online. Write my words.
but of course the government will use it for censorship just like the FCC nowadays censors the TV and Radio.
You mean how OTA broadcasts are supposed to be family friendly between certain hours of the day? The horror.
but of course what ends up happening is that now you have to get a license from the government to say something on radio waves.
No, you need to get a license for a certain chunk of spectrum and demonstrate that you know how to design and operate your equipment in such a way that you're not going to ruin the airwaves for everyone else. There is a DAMN good reason that the EM spectrum is not a free for all! How would you like the local EMS service to be unable to communicate because some random down the street decided to start playing music on their band?
For radio, the broadcasting space is limited and multiple people broadcasting onto the same frequencies would ruin it for everyone. By your standard, why haven't they started censoring telephone conversations? The pressures that brought the FCC into putting those regulations in place just don't make sense for the internet.
Let's see who is conflating things. Enforcing the rights of frequency band owners has nothing to do with needing an FCC. All you need is regular enforcement of property rights. If someone has a right to use a frequency and someone else is disturbing that right then they will be prosecuted according to the law. Just like with land.
Ok, so what's the problem with the FCC? If I find a frequency that is unassigned (no current owner) and unused (no current squatter) then I can't start using it (homesteading) and I can't acquire property rights from mixing my labor with it. Instead, I have to go to the FCC and hope they approve me for broadcast license; and they will approve it or not depending on their political opinions about what I am going to be saying in that frequency. Also, broadcasting licenses are non-transferable so I can't buy your license even if we both agree on the transaction - the FCC needs to vet me first. This is a huge problem, as I hope you can see. That means the government must approve of my message before I can say it. It is an impingement on free speech. If people could yell high enough that others could hear without needing radio waves (websites = yelling high enough) then the government would want to curb that too (and indeed it is, with Net Neutrality).
Hopefully this clarifies my point.
> why haven't they started censoring telephone conversations
Because it is usually two-way, with both parties usually being part of the government's tax farm (ie. regular folks), in which case there's more in it for the government if they record our conversations than if they censored it (which would make people weary of communicating, and harder for the government to spy on its citizens).
Also the telephone is usually one-to-one communication, not one-to-many like radio stations, tv channels and internet websites. So the damage from unwanted information getting out to the public at large easily, and therefore the need to censor it, are almost non-existent.
And just to clarify for the impolite person below, Karunamon:
By censorhip I don't mean censoring existing stations. I mean disallowing stations from ever coming to be, because the FCC disagrees politically with the folks asking for a broadcast license. The public at large ends up losing out, because they have only government-approved stations to listen to, and never get to hear truly dissenting opinions. This is curbed free speech.
As for the excuse that one must get a license to prove they are technically capable, a technical test would suffice, just like a technical test suffices for handling guns. The government can't choose not to give guns to people of certain political opinions, but it can choose not to give broadcast licenses to those people. That's what's wrong. If you own a frequency and it is disturbed you have the right to sue and collect reparation from the person who disturbed your property. The FCC is not needed for this just as there's no FCC for land - if someone disturbs your land you call the police.
"To preserve incentives for broadband operators to invest in their networks, my proposal will modernize Title II, tailoring it for the 21st century..."
This concerns me. What kinds of changes are coming to Title II?
0 - http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/02/why-the-ex-cable-lob...
I always marvelled at historical hatred between protestants and catholics during and prior to the enlightenment. I now realize that this is a symptom of human nature. Humans apparently have to hate the other guys no matter what.
In the past it was religion, today it is whether or not you are a network expert with an opinion about the technical implications of net-neutrality proposals. People on the pro-net neutrality side of this debate become furious if you don't spout their orthodoxy. I find it revolting.
But yes, by all means, downvote sp332 for making a completely accurate assessment of how our legislative system works. It really improves the quality of the discussion.
It is an accurate assessment of how our legislative system works, but it is completely irrelevant to the discussion. The FCC is not putting a bill up for a vote by congress, they are proposing telecommunications rules that an internal commission will vote on.
Because Congressional opponents of neutrality can (and, in fact, already has) attempt to head this off through legislation (so Congress is relevant, so its not wrong to bring them up), but to do directly undo any regulatory action, they will need to pass new law, to which the veto power is relevant, so it is incorrect to "point out" that vetos aren't relevant.
If the GOP really decided to make an issue out of this, they have majorities in both houses fo Congress and thus could, in fact, pass a bill that would require a Presidential veto if their caucus were sufficiently united and worked up about the issue. Realistically they probably won't bother, but your claim that it would be impossible to get even a simple majority is unfounded.
Yes, but the bills that needs to be passed were already passed (most significantly in 1934 and 1996.)
In order to stop the FCC taking this action under existing law, Congress would have to pass a new bill, which mean that the filibuster in the Senate and veto by the President are real issues.
Wheeler isn't proposing a new law, he is proposing an exercise of the FCC's regulatory authority under existing law.
The commission still has to vote on this proposed rule-making though.
However, I don't think Congress will act in this case. One reason Congress delegates regulation to specific agencies is because Congress does not have the expertise to craft the proper regulations. As a Republican, it seems to me the FCC has taken a balanced approach to regulation in this case, so I don't see much negative feedback by Congress.
Congress can do so only by passing new laws, which mean with the consent of the President or over the President's veto.
> As a Republican, it seems to me the FCC has taken a balanced approach to regulation in this case, so I don't see much negative feedback by Congress.
The Republicans in Congress (and the Republican minority on the FCC, as well) have been fairly consistently opposed to any FCC regulation in the direction of net neutrality, including the previous and much weaker actions the FCC has taken in the past, and have, in fact, already initiated efforts to head this off based on the discussions which indicated that the FCC was considering something in this direction and explicitly deny the FCC authority to make rules regarding net neutrality.
So, assuming the FCC actually passes Wheeler's proposal, I expect substantial pushback in Congress. I don't think opponents of neutrality have the votes to pass a law on the matter over the President's veto, though.
What about the extremist anti-regulatory positions of many in the GOP? Not every Republican thinks that way, but enough to do generate a lot of noise and elect a substantial portion of Congress.
DAMN right.
This seems to be strong evidence that government is better at keeping trade free than an 'unregulated free market'?
I think libertarians are not naive; they're old boys accustomed to dealing with other old boys in that network. So they see free market working pretty well in that context, and want to extend it.
It's not far fetched to make parallels from this that if the 'privatized' major corporations aren't above squashing competitors through unfair trade practices and lobbying for biased regulations in the telecom industries....then they would do it in other industries.
And this kills the market.
Through franchise fees, fighting public right of way sharing, and other forms of lobbying these large corporations have used law and regulation to their favor. This is not a position libertarians support and it is not a market anyone would point at and call "unregulated" in any sense of the term.
Yes. Most regulation benefits some corporations, because there are very few regulatory issues where there aren't corporations on all sides of the issue.
> (regulation tends to mean "regulation against corporations")
No, it doesn't. There is certainly a particular faction that sees regulation as inherently "anti-business", and a popular association of business = corporation, so I can see how that idea would come about, but its not at all what regulation means.
So your choice is: big business squelching competition directly or big business squelching competition through lobbying.
The problem still goes back to unchecked unregulated big businesses forcing themselves on the country with their market share and giant wealth.
X isn't perfect, so Y must be better? That makes no sense.
I'm pro-free market because I go into the grocery store and see an entire row of bread. In communism, there is an entire row of people waiting for bread. Free market == abundance, government == rationing.
I use communism as the example because it is the opposite of free-market and highlights the historical (not ideological) differences between the two systems. Free markets have a triage effect. When supplies are limited, prices go up, and if you really need something you can still get it (but you'll pay more).
The opposite of that system is one of price fixing and rationing. You may need something more than me, but the price is fixed at X, so there needs to be a lottery to decide who gets the limited supply. If I win, I get to watch fail videos on youtube all day. If you win, you get to run your online business that day.
ISPs are struggling to keep up with demand. They've been trying to price their services in a way to triage demand while they build more capacity (which is mostly held up by local governments). Now the FCC will step in and make sure that I can watch my youtube videos all day and make it illegal for the ISP to favor your clearly more important traffic.
Every thing in the supermarket is created by a small amount of companies. The rest is all marketing.
Unregulated free market doesn't stay free for long because competition is rapidly consolidated, squashed, or absorbed by larger fish into mega monopolies.
A free market is just as crazy as communism as both have the end result of a small group of people controlling the market.
You have plenty of choices, at least 5 distinct parent companies that make different brands, smaller and still independent brands, a small local bakery, buy the ingredients and make it yourself, or start a bread business and sell out to Kraft and buy yourself a private island.
When everyone is waiting in line for bread it's because they have no choice.
Is it possible that you're too spoiled to see how spoiled you are? Are you one of those 99%'ers that protested against big companies in the rain wearing your North Face jacket, Merrell boots, and tweeted about how much big companies suck from your iphone?
No last-mile unbundling means instead of fostering better service through competition, we're attempting to foster better service through regulation.
"there will be no rate regulation, no tariffs, no last-mile unbundling"
I don't have a problem with the lack of unbundling. I was a Covad customer for a number of years, and it was atrocious - whenever there was an issue, Covad and Ameritech/SBC/AT&T would go round and round with finger-pointing. Later, when AT&T began their U-verse (FTTN) deployment, Covad was shut out, stuck with the longer copper lines all the way back to the CO.
There was a time when you could rent a local loop from a regulated telco and have it connected to an independent Internet service provider. Remember independent DSL ISPs? I still have a connection through one, "Sonic.net". They no longer offer that to new customers.
200 people trying to stream Netflix over a satellite downlink? That should be a riot.
It should allow them to be consistent about it and rate-limit everyone evenly, which would have the same effect.
The really interesting question would be what happens with their on-plan video systems – my understanding is that they cache a selection of videos on the plane which are pre-seeded to avoid clogging the connection. Even running a public proxy wouldn't help with that unless everyone is watching the same Netflix/Hulu/etc. videos. I'm not sure whether they could get some sort of waiver but it's definitely something to look for as the policy details emerge.
I don't see how that could work without some protocol where e.g. Netflix, et al. could preload content in advance and how could that work – voting at the gate, only being able to see the top n most-popular on <service>?
That's an allocation of about 450kbit/sec (~56kb/sec) down per seat on a 737 assuming the plane is outfitted with GoGo's latest tech. Upload would be a tiny fraction of that. It's in everyone's interest to disallow high-throughput usage while permitting burstable high-bandwidth low-throughput usage.
"Bright line" rules that no type or source of content may be discriminated against by carriers only make sense if bandwidth is not a scarce resource.
If you want bursting then tell the router to allow bursting. Such as a 15 second window on the throttling.
There's no reason to believe that this couldn't be solved with some variation of fair queuing with bursting and since that's content and source neutral because it applies to all users equally.
This is a basic network admin skill and the technology is already pervasively deployed – in the 90s, 56kpbs was the speed you assumed for the average home users and businesses used to have a hundred people behind a 1.5Mb T1. The only challenges since then have either been extreme scale or the more expensive things the major ISPs have tried to do to throttle traffic selectively.
Too bad the regulation isnt simply this one line of text without the "lawful" caveat
Network neutrality by definition is about all packets being treated equally regardless of the source or destination.
(The FCC adopted non-blocking rules for lawful content and applications in the previous Open Internet Order that was struck down by the courts.)
I'm in complete and utter awe that they listened to the people and not the rich corporations for once.
What does that mean? Sounds like a euphemism for an Internet kill switch?
But, yeah, this is one thing (of many) that its going to be worth reading the actual text, when it is made public, to understand.
Kind of like he's daring them to try and stop him.
> These enforceable, bright-line rules will ban paid prioritization
'Prioritize' means arranging things in order of their relative importance. Paid prioritization means arranging delivery of goods (Internet services for example) by order of the relative amount you charge for things that are important to you. Revenue, for example. Or no revenue, more specifically.
My gut says that free Internet should be a basic human right. Period. Nobody should be able to charge for it. I'm not sure how in the hell we're going to put that into practice though. I'm thinking about it.
As for compute services, well, those aren't free to run. And those compute jobs require bandwidth to complete. Should those be free? I think not. Should someone be allowed to use their 'free' allowance of Internet when it takes away from the compute services interconnects? No.
I could be off on a wrong tangent, so I'll just stop now.
Is there something going on here that's not obvious?
In a nutshell, in order for big business to cut production and raise prices, they need the state to act as an enforcer or regulator for their cartel. Their strategy has been to lobby under the guise of a public good, in this case "net neutrality" (a term which I'd bet has its origins with some very expensive marketing/PR firm), but the end effect is for state regulation to create artificial scarcity and subsidize costs to increase profits for big business. This is state capitalism, or corporate liberalism - how corporatism operates in the U.S. Big corporations want regulation because they fear competition.
Before the Progressive Era, big businesses wanted to cut production and increase prices, but failed in doing so in the (relatively) free market that existed at the time. New competitors would arise or cartel members would cheat and lower prices, and the cartel agreement would fall apart. This kept prices low, trending toward the cost of production, which was great for consumers.
However, with state regulation, cartels can be maintained. The state can raise barriers to entry to protect cartel members from competition, and it can also bring down the hammer on cartel members who cheat and try to lower prices.
Of course, this isn't how it's sold to the public. Lobbyists tell the story of how "big bad corporations" need to be reigned in for the public good by benevolent big government, and voters seem to buy it every time. Behind the scenes, big business is colluding with the state for monopoly privilege. See the history of railroads, Big Agri, Big Oil, the telecoms, the Federal Reserve for examples of this playing out.
The state has granted corporations so many privileges, it's really quite unbelievable -- tariffs, patents, copyrights, licensing, regulation -- all of this subsidized by the public to grant corporations the privilege of giving us less for more. For our own good, of course.
This is how the rich get richer, and wealth continues to centralize and concentrate. By conning the public, and using the state as a blunt force instrument to keep competition out, and keep prices high.
Murray Rothbard gave a short lecture on the history of progressive regulation [1], and he also wrote a book called Power and Market [2] if you want a detailed overview of power dynamics in the market.
Rothbard was heavily influenced by Gabriel Kolko, a Progressive Era historian and leftist anti-capitalist, who wrote:
> Despite the large number of mergers, and the growth in the absolute size of many corporations, the dominant tendency in the American economy at the beginning of this [the twentieth] century was toward growing competition. Competition was unacceptable to many key business and financial interests... As new competitors sprang up, and as economic power was diffused throughout an expanding nation, it became apparent to many important businessmen that only the national government could rationalize the economy. Although specific conditions varied from industry to industry, internal problems that could be solved only by political means were the common denominator in those industries whose leaders advocated greater federal regulation. Ironically, contrary to the consensus of historians, it was not the existence of monopoly that caused the federal government to intervene in the economy, but the lack of it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62rI8OYFzGg
[2] http://mises.org/sites/default/files/Man,%20Economy,%20and%2...
>>bright-line rule = a judicial rule of decision that is simple and straightforward and that avoids or ignore the ambiguities or difficulties of the problems at hand. The phrase dates from the mid-20th century. The metaphor of a bright line is somewhat older than the phrase bright-line rule - e.g.: "The difficult part of this case comes with regard to ... the activity of the Board of Temperance ....A bright line between that which brings conviction to one person and its influence on the body politic cannot be drawn." Girard Trust Co. v. I.R.C., 122 F.2d 108, 110 (3d Cir. 1941)./"[T]he McCambridge majority opinion ... agrees that the Kirby bright-line-rule is but a mere formalism ...." J.G.Trichter, Bright-Lining Away the Right to Counsel, Tex. Law., 6 Nov. 1989, at 26. Cf. hard and fast rule.
Millions of people beat millions of dollars with SOPA. the same seems to be happening here.
Say what you like about the slacktivism online but when the actual web is threatened people do seem to mobilize effectively.
We can't get complacent though their pockets are deep and their patience is endless. SOPA will be back and this needs riding all the way to signature.
Much like net neutrality is the topic of the FCC, cargo neutrality on rail lines was the topic of the ICC [1] in their day. The problem of the early 1900s began with a bounty of riches in the highly competitive American Railway sector. Merchants using the railways were demanding "rebates" from railway companies for large shipments threatening to take business elsewhere and driving their shipping costs down. Of course, the same leverage was not available to smaller shippers, making their rates much higher and forcing them to raise the prices of their goods. The system was out of balance.
In 1903, congress and President Theodore Roosevelt, passed the Elkins Act [2], which eliminated rebates, but had the unfortunate side-effect of increasing price collusion between shippers and the railroads. The Elkins act did not establish a fixed rate, leaving interests to make deals that, again, were disadvantageous for smaller businesses. The only metric of discrimination was the diverting from a fixed railway schedule [3].
To correct the problems of the Elkins Act, the Hepburn Act was passed in 1906 greatly expanding the power of the ICC to regulate the Railroad Industry. The result was fixed prices on shipping deemed "just and reasonable" by the ICC, increased penalties for non-compliance, and an open and standard accounting system for the railroad companies. (As an aside, the depreciation of railway companies contributed to the Panic of 1907. A good word on that here: [4])
If all this back and forth sounds familiar, it is because we are facing the same problem today shipping bits that we were shipping coal and shirts all those years ago. The idea of prioritized delivery is not new or novel, but was dealt with before Netflix and Verizon began suing one another. What interests me is whether we will see legislation similar to the Elkins and Hepburn act for digital goods and services. I doubt very seriously that we will get fixed $/(Mbps) or $/GB mandates from the FCC, but already we are seeing definitions being made and lines being drawn [5]. There is already language from Wheeler about "responsibility to the 20 percent [without 25down/3up]", just as there was strong language from Roosevelt about the railway industries.
2015 will be an interesting year indeed.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Commerce_Commission [2] http://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Learn-About-TR/TR-Enc... [3] http://books.google.com/books?id=g-pCAAAAIAAJ&dq=elkins%20ac... [4] http://books.google.com/books?id=R3koAAAAYAAJ&hl=en [5] http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/broadband-now-defined-25-...
This isn't what we wanted...
We never indented for X to be interpreted that way...
It would have worked, but they didn't go far enough...
It would have worked, but they went too far...
We need this new law X to protect the cable companies because upstart Y's new technology doesn't have to deal with FCC regulation which gives it an unfair advantage...
Give it ten years and the FCC will be about as popular as TSA or the NSA on HN.