FCC: We're GUTTED people think we'd gut net neutrality

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Tom Wheeler has confirmed reports that proposed changes to internet governance will abandon net neutrality principles and says companies can charge extra for some types of traffic so long as it's "commercially reasonable." "There are reports that the FCC is gutting the Open …

[Graham Marsden]

"Just what constitutes commercially unreasonable behavior...

"...will be decided on a campaign contribution by campaign contribution basis"

FTFY

[M Gale]

Mmmm, double-dipped wires.

Must be extra thick.

[Anonymous Coward]

Old saying

There is an old saying. "Don't feed me crap and tell me it's cake".

[M Gale]

Re: Old saying

Or the other variation:

Don't shit on my cupcake and tell me it's frosting.

[ecofeco]

Re: Old saying

Or trickle down and tell me it's raining.

[kiwimuso]

Re: Old saying

Nah, I prefer the old saying -

"Don't piss on my boots and tell me it's raining!"

Beer, 'cos if you drink too much of it, it could happen.

[NoneSuch]

That's the last straw for me. Isolate the American border routers and let them do their silliness within their own country. We've been geolocked out of their services like Netflix, they consider us their personal hand puppets as far as surveillance goes, and now you can bet any traffic going overseas will be throttled big time unless you are a major corporation and can pay for it.

Time for a good old Cuban style blockade until sanity breaks out across the pond.

[BitDr]

OK, the question is do we have the will and ability to take our toy away from them? Move the cheese, so to speak.

[Mark 85]

Quote: until sanity breaks out across the pond

You're dreaming of course. There's no chance of that breaking out here in the US or anywhere else as far as I can tell. As the Marx Brothers once said: "There's no such thing as a Sanity Clause".

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't that the damned ? ;)

[Don Jefe]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm curious. If being locked out of Netflix and other offerings why haven't competing offerings sprung up that cater to your desires?

[ecofeco]

"Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm curious. If being locked out of Netflix and other offerings why haven't competing offerings sprung up that cater to your desires?

Not sure what you are asking, but I'll take the question at face value.

The short answer is market lock out by law.

The long answer is that this is done by lobbying for favorable rules and regulations to the specific operations of your business, thus creating artificial barriers to market entry by any possible competition. Current examples abound.

Tesla Motor unable to open dealerships.

RIAA

Tax breaks that reward moving a business offshore.

Market collusion among industry leaders.

Inbred board of directors, i.e. BOD members often serve on dozens of other company boards.

In this case, the ruling will indeed, favor the telco. That's right, Telco. Single tense. In the US, that's AT&T. They built and control the entire telcom infrastructure, no matter what fiction you may hear. The cable companies run a distant second. Combined. And they still have to tie into the AT&T system.

Now do you see?

[Alan Brown]

"In this case, the ruling will indeed, favor the telco. That's right, Telco. Single tense. In the US, that's AT&T."

In case anyone's wondering, AT&T has been gradually reassembling itself since the "break up" and in the process drove all the LECs out of business along with GTE - AND managed to get legal monopolies instated on wireline Internet access in most states.

The "new" AT&T no longer has all that bothersome burden of R&D labs, etc and has effectively held USA LD rates far higher than they should be (Once upon a time the USA had the cheapest LD in the world. Now it's amongst the most expensive) as well as generally managing to get PUC approvals to keep lineside charges high by promising to invest in infrastructure, then tearing those promises up once they've got what they want..

AT&T became a borg in the first place by refusing to interconnect with competitors or only doing so at preadatory rates. The latest interconnect agreements with cablecos look to be moving back in that direction.

[2+2=5]

no blocking of lawful content

> no blocking of lawful content

Except when the paid-for content completely fills the pipes and there is no bandwidth left.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: no blocking of lawful content

That will probably hardly ever happen. But somehow it'll "happen" often, to "encourage" the non-payers to pay up, or the low payers to pay more. Nice protection racket you handed the near monopolies that are our ISPs, FCC.

If we had true competition it wouldn't be a problem, but there are many many places in the US where you have a choice between one DSL provider and one cable provider. Not much choice there, and not much incentive for either to heavily compete against the other rather than figure it is more profitable to let them lie to you knowing they'll let the other guy lie to you as well.

[Mark 85]

Re: no blocking of lawful content

I guess this should be asked: who decides what's "lawful content"? An act of Congress to define it, or the ISP decides?

[Rottenham]

The American Way

Well, it sounds like somebody at the FCC will be getting a new in-ground pool in their yard, just in time for summer! I wonder how slow my connection will become.

[Yes Me]

Re: The American Way

I doubt you'll notice any difference. While I don't appreciate the legal comedy that the Americans have played out, paying more to get more has been the way the Internet has worked all its life. The other extreme - essentially banning traffic engineering, as the stupid wording recently adopted by the European Parliament seems to do - is just as dumb. Fortunately the technology is pretty resilient and will manage to go on working, and more capacity will be added when needed, as always. This is not the end of the world.

[ecofeco]

Re: The American Way

"...paying more to get more has been the way the Internet has worked all its life. "

Oh?

Early domain names cost $1000.00 each (no typo)

- now they cost nothing

Hosting could cost the same or down to $100 month at the low end

- now $10 month at most for the average person or small business

Website building would cost thousands for a professional site

- free template building tools available to any person or small business included with hosting

Early ISP connections could cost $100+ per month FOR DIAL-UP. DSL+ didn't even exist for home.

- Basic DSL now costs $20 avg.

No Internet capable smart phones. When the first one appeared, it cost extra to connect. A lot extra.

More than 2 emails box per domain? - EXTRA

Hosting space measured in single digit megs

Allowed monthly traffic measure in single digit mbps.

Costs more? When were you born?

[ecofeco]

Re: The American Way

Downvotes? Something not true in my post? Or just mad because I called out a shill?

My, my.

[Yes Me]

@ecofeco Re: The American Way

I don't think you're very familiar with adoption curves and cost curves for new technology, not to mention the influence of monopolists. Of course capacity cost a lot more when the Internet was young. Long distance trunks were made of copper and leased by monopolists. Each dial up connection tied up a phone line at the ISP end as well as at the user end. And there were fewer economies of scale. And the .com registry was an unregulated monopoly. Actually, it's the American way of doing business, and its worldwide clones, that brought prices down to where they are today, plus a little regulation and competition in the registry business. But the fact is, if you want to double your capacity this afternoon, you'll have to pay more (maybe not double, of course). That's another aspect of capitalism. Get real, please.

[ecofeco]

Re: The American Way

In ground pool? Piffle.

Try the golden handshake and set for life.

Still, have an upvote.

[ecofeco]

Go on! Pull the other one!

Liars. Like hell "no effect"!

[phil dude]

1Gb/s for all...

I got downvotes on the other thread for suggesting perhaps everyone should have more bandwidth, then there would be no point charging anymore than for a specific service.

Or perhaps I was downvoted for pointing out the artificial scarcity that is ISP bandwith. The big ones (ATT etc.. ) make plenty of profit. The only reason we are being gouged is because of local monopoly rules (invented by good old local corruption), and the fact that Google hasn't offered its service in anywhere near enough places.

As I mentioned before, I live in a local monopoly area so consider this an on topic /rant.

P.

[Yes Me]

Re: 1Gb/s for all...

"perhaps everyone should have more bandwidth"

There's no such thing as free lunch. More capacity does actually cost more money (and I guarantee that I'm not a shill for a carrier: I'm just somebody that understands a little about the technology and elementary facts of economics).

"artificial scarcity"

Exactly; there's your problem right there. In far too many countries, incumbents have kept a de facto monopoly of the tubes to your house and that allows them to gouge you. That monopoly, if it exists for physical reasons (the cost of installing cables), needs to be regulated to the bone.

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast & Sprint

give each other the 'High Five' and break out the Champagne.

Then they rush to prepare plans to charge Google, Amazon, Netflix and the like a 50% surcharge or get throttled back to 128baud when playing Videos.

Meanwhile their own plans for Streaming services at $20-50 a month get the green light.

US Internet Neutrality? RIP 2014.

Anon because I don't want to get throttled any more than I do at present.

[Gnoitall]

Orwell called it

All content providers are equal, but some providers are more equal than others

[Don Jefe]

Heavy Reading

I would have a lot more confidence in the FCC's proclamations were issued after they read the rules that private industry has written up for them. I'm 100% certain these snakecharmers haven't actually read the rules, much less understand what they're proposing and backing.

You can see it on the FCC website for Christ's sake. Senior mangenent contradicting each other right in their own page. These fucks have no clue what's going on and I wish they'd just shut up instead of making themselves look even more ridiculous.

[Eguro]

Hah!

"Wheeler said the agency would protect consumers from "abusive market activity.""

Okay okay... Let's just assume that the 5 people currently in the FCC actually will do this. What happens next year? In 5 years? 10 years?

It doesn't take more than 3 people on the FCC with a skewed view of what abusive market activity is, and it's doomed. Once the go-ahead is given once, it'll be a helluva fight to take it back again, better never to give it!

[ecofeco]

Re: Hah!

"Watchdog" agencies haven't protected the consumer in 30 years.

[joemostowey]

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler "the dealer", handing the internet on a silver platter to the people whom he worked decades for as a lobbyist - who would have dreamed it would happen that way? ?

Graft and corruption are rampant in the USA government, and it is so prevalent, that chairman Tom Wheeler can do this openly, and brazenly tell the American people he betrayed, who you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?

Bet the Time warner- Comcast merger goes through too. Americans live by the golden rule, thanks to the supremely stupid court - He who has the gold makes the rules.

[phil dude]

power is uncomfortable...

It is obvious that a free (uncensored), fast and fair internet is a threat to those in power.....

P.

[auburnman]

We need a way to play the bastards off against one another. If only we could convince the RIAA/MPAA etc that pay to play will drive people to darknets and torrent sites.

[Identity]

At the risk of stating the obvious...

"Commercially reasonable" = profitable

[RoKphish]

Translation:

“Commercially Reasonable” is just FCC speak for segregation, discrimination & censorship.

We the People Net Neutrality Petition

http://1.usa.gov/1mHh7S0