FCC To Propose New 'Net Neutrality' Rules

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the FCC is going to propose a new set of rules governing internet access some time tomorrow.

The proposed rules would prevent the service providers from blocking or discriminating against specific websites, but would allow broadband providers to give some traffic preferential treatment, so long as such arrangements are available on "commercially reasonable" terms for all interested content companies. Whether the terms are commercially reasonable would be decided by the FCC on a case-by-case basis.
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Short story is: We're screwed.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-for-good-fcc-may-endorse-pay-for-play-deals/

"The proposed rules would prevent the service providers from blocking or discriminating against specific websites, but would allow broadband providers to give some traffic preferential treatment, so long as such arrangements are available on 'commercially reasonable' terms for all interested content companies,"
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Not a surprise considering this:

fcc-round-robin.jpg
 
The proposed rules would prevent the service providers from blocking or discriminating against specific websites, but would allow broadband providers to give some traffic preferential treatment...
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Can someone explain how an ISP could give some traffic preferential treatment without discriminating against those that haven't paid them?
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
Can someone explain how an ISP could give some traffic preferential treatment without discriminating against those that haven't paid them?
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Oh, youre a customer that has the 2mbit speed with the 100 gig cap, and you want to watch netflix in 4k? Lol, dumbass

Oh, looks like netflix just gave us a billion dollars to stream their traffic, okay. Now your netflix data doesnt count against your cap and your netflix streaming speed is now 15mbit.


/doubtful
 
And this in a nutshell is why I have nothing but hatred and ugly ass contempt for the ruling class and their shitbag sycophant ball-cupping lackey corporate rich asshole buddies. What will make this a complete shit fest is watching the bitching and moaning and complaining online while no one gets off their asses and does a damn thing about it. This is an easy problem to solve folks. It just means that people would have to inconvenience themselves for a time and band together and flat out tell these pigs that if they want to play that game, we will drop our service IN MASS and bankrupt your asses. Lets see how your shareholders respond to that.

Money talks, and bullshit runs a damn marathon.

If people were serious and actually did this IN MASS, those greedy turds would back off that shit REAL fast...BUT...I don't see that happening. So, we will get EXACTLY WHAT WE DESERVE, so frankly, I don't want to see anyone bitching.

Just sayin'

BTW: Yes, I am going to be sending letters (not e-mail) to whoever I can think of, not that they will care but at least I "said something" instead of just completely 100% bending over and biting the pillow since they will be going in dry.
 
STrooperTK421 said:
And this in a nutshell is why I have nothing but hatred and ugly ass contempt for the ruling class and their shitbag sycophant ball-cupping lackey corporate rich asshole buddies. What will make this a complete shit fest is watching the bitching and moaning and complaining online while no one gets off their asses and does a damn thing about it. This is an easy problem to solve folks. It just means that people would have to inconvenience themselves for a time and band together and flat out tell these pigs that if they want to play that game, we will drop our service IN MASS and bankrupt your asses. Lets see how your shareholders respond to that.

Money talks, and bullshit runs a damn marathon.

If people were serious and actually did this IN MASS, those greedy turds would back off that shit REAL fast...BUT...I don't see that happening. So, we will get EXACTLY WHAT WE DESERVE, so frankly, I don't want to see anyone bitching.

Just sayin'

BTW: Yes, I am going to be sending letters (not e-mail) to whoever I can think of, not that they will care but at least I "said something" instead of just completely 100% bending over and biting the pillow since they will be going in dry.
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Did you post this from the internet or a carrier pigeon?

If the answer is "internet", there is the problem right there. People will keep paying for the internet since there is no alternative for the first world.
 
Dont worry everyone, if we want to stop insider corruption and secret under-the-table handshaking, we need only vote with our wallets! Yes thats right, if we play by the rules we'll win even if they dont. No need for any oversight here, the free market economy will sort itself out.
 
I just wish that for once, someone in our government would actually have the BALLS to tell these greedy stains what they can go do with themselves. Declare the internet a utility and tell the ISP's and anyone else who stands to profit from this to fuck off.

Sadly, this isn't likely to happen, and the internet as we have known it is going to go away. And that saddens me profoundly, but it also scares me. There is WAY MORE to this than just video service...oh no...this is a round-about-fuck-everyone-in-the-ass way of crushing the freedom that the internet has brought to the masses. The old farts are scared, and they are rich, and they get what they want because they know that the majority of the people are shiftless lazy shit-for-brains who will buy whatever dumbshit story they cook up about why this is "good".

I'm disgusted, and powerless, and that is a shit feeling.
 
To me this all seems like a scam.

When they first trie dto do this it WOULD have passed but they didn't have them classed as the right thing, the judge clearly said what they NEEDED to do.

Now they are caving in? All of this from a former lobbyist?

It's not hard to connect the dots, to me it seems like mr. Wheeler KNEW it wouldn't pass the "first" time because of the classification (which was most likely done on purpose, so it'd look like he "Tried") and now they are doing this and allowing the cable companies and things to get EXACTLY What they have always wanted all while the entire POINT of "neutrality" seems to be ignored.

I mean HOW do you NOT "discriminate" against sites and still allow "preferential treatment?"

By the vary nature THAT Is discrimination, when you tell "x" website they have to "stay in the back of the bus" while the "preferential treatment" gets to sit in the front.
 
Blows my mind... who cares what the internet traffic is? If the ISP's client is already paying for data, it shouldn't matter whether it's netflix, amazon or www.bunchofcorruptfarkwitscolluding.com. Not any better here in Canada though. Have to go to a third world country to get better internet these days.
 
Term-X said:
Blows my mind... who cares what the internet traffic is? If the ISP's client is already paying for data, it shouldn't matter whether it's netflix, amazon or www.bunchofcorruptfarkwitscolluding.com. Not any better here in Canada though. Have to go to a third world country to get better internet these days.
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The ISPs are also cable TV providers and content producers. They care what you do with your internet bandwidth because it affects their bottom line.
 
ocellaris said:
The ISPs are also cable TV providers and content producers. They care what you do with your internet bandwidth because it affects their bottom line.
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And this is exactly why it is time to tell these bastards to eat a fat one and declare the internet a public utility.
 
Next thing you know ISP's will do what dishnetwork does, give you a data cap and if you go over they throttle your speeds down to dial-up.
 
STrooperTK421 said:
BTW: Yes, I am going to be sending letters (not e-mail) to whoever I can think of, not that they will care but at least I "said something" instead of just completely 100% bending over and biting the pillow since they will be going in dry.
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Politicians openly lie to us when running for an election between two shitty choices. If you really think sending a letter is going to a make a difference good for you, i'm past that point. I'm done voting as well which only feels like playing their game to make people feel like they have a voice.

This government is no longer ours, it's now run by businesses with money and I think the only recourse we the people have is to stock up on guns.
 
The proposed rules would prevent the service providers from blocking or discriminating against specific websites, but would allow broadband providers to give some traffic preferential treatment...
Click to expand...

I see several people have brought up that this sounds like an oxymoron, but I wanted to point out what an example of this might be.

An internet provider has to route large amounts of traffic, however, some internet traffic is inherently more time sensitive than other traffic. For example, imagine you are downloading a file. If the internet slows down, you will get your file slower, but in the end, you will still get the file. Contrast this with live video/audio streaming. If the internet slows down, the video/audio can degrade to the point where you can no longer discern image/audio. At that point, the service has lost all usefullness. Cleary, live streaming is more time sensitive than file downloading. It makes some sense, then, to give a slight priority to these types of services (QOS, traffic shaping). At the same time, you are not discriminating against specific websites or people, you are discriminating against particular types of traffic.

As for whether or not this net neutrality rule has been passed through corrupt hands... no idea.
 
serpretetsky said:
I see several people have brought up that this sounds like an oxymoron, but I wanted to point out what an example of this might be.

An internet provider has to route large amounts of traffic, however, some internet traffic is inherently more time sensitive than other traffic. For example, imagine you are downloading a file. If the internet slows down, you will get your file slower, but in the end, you will still get the file. Contrast this with live video/audio streaming. If the internet slows down, the video/audio can degrade to the point where you can no longer discern image/audio. At that point, the service has lost all usefullness. Cleary, live streaming is more time sensitive than file downloading. It makes some sense, then, to give a slight priority to these types of services (QOS, traffic shaping). At the same time, you are not discriminating against specific websites or people, you are discriminating against particular types of traffic.

As for whether or not this net neutrality rule has been passed through corrupt hands... no idea.
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" At the same time, you are not discriminating against specific websites or people, you are discriminating against particular types of traffic."

Thus defeating the point of "neutrality."

Also would you not think say for example, Netflix pays more money and amazon doesn't, so Netflix streaming works better, which leads to amazon losing customers and going to netflix.

That is discrimination.

Basically it's the old "mob" tactics of coming into your shop, saying "pay us for protection" (IE protection from them) and if you do not pay them your goods/shop will lose business because they'll muck it up by sticking it in the "slow" lane.

There should be no "slow" lanes, we do not NEED slow lanes.

This is nothing but yet more dragging their feet that ISP's do, they make money HAND OVER FIST and do NOT use that money to build new infrastructure (which they could EASILY do and offer better internet), instead they want to squeeze and squeeze the customers out of every penny and not spend a dime on making the internet actually better.

We already know this, the whole "internet hog" thing was a myth, the fact that when Google fiber "moves in" suddenly the local isp's find it worthwhile to suddenly offer competitive pricing /build up their internet there and offer fiber or higher speeds.

The quicker the internet is seen as a Utility (Which it should be, just like a telephone, most companies REQUIRE you to have it these days not to mention how many businesses rely heavily on it) the better.
 
I find their wording as loophole for more legal bribing of our government offiicals
 
Are we looking at an end game where once isp's squeeze content providers for extra cash...they then squeeze consumers with an a la carte model where you pay for basic access...then extra for "fast lane" gaming, video, "premium" websites etc?
 
STrooperTK421 said:
...Declare the internet a utility and tell the ISP's and anyone else who stands to profit from this to fuck off.
Sadly, this isn't likely to happen,....
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In many locations, ISP's are considered a public utility and regulated by the local PUC.
Unfortunately, that only serves to make the problem worse, since it eliminates the competition needed to drive prices down.

I'm not a fan of ISP's but one of the aspects of this issue that always mystifies me is the pervasive expectation that there should be no tie between consumption and cost.
I can think of no other commodity where this is true.

Do you want more gas? You have to pay more.
Do you use more electricity than your neighbor? You have to pay more.
Do you want more food? You have to pay more.

Why is this the one commodity that people expect to pay the same whether they only use the internet for email or they use it to stream 1080p content from Netflix?

Then you add the irrational expectation that an ISP should keep its entire infrastructure running on cutting-edge technology without passing on that constant investment cost to the people who are using it.
 
One of the more bothersome aspects of this is the purposefully vague "commercially reasonable terms" and the accompanying idea that the FCC would determine what constitutes commercially reasonable on a case-by-case basis.

It reminds me of the early days of ADA regulations that used the term "good faith effort" with regard to ADA compliance, but failed to qualify what exactly a good faith effort consisted of and failed to identify who made that determination.

I can't think of a worse approach.
 
Basically it says they can do it, but they have to publish what thy are doing.
I think this is a good thing, hear me out.

I think that the FCC said FUCKIT, laid out what the companies want to do, and added a bunch of requirements of publishing who they give preferential treatment too, what the faster speeds are/what is provided.

All this lays the groundwork for when a company is sued for this, and it goes up the courts, lawyers have the data to point to and show that it leads to unfair business advantage that favors the major players, and leaves new startups/little guys in the dust. HOPEFULLY then it can be ruled upon by the supreme court and Net neutrality made the law of the internet.

TLDR: I'm hoping this is the FCC's plan to backdoor Net neutrality into law.

Caveat, Or it could just be corruption at its best and they don't care.
 
gathagan said:
In many locations, ISP's are considered a public utility and regulated by the local PUC.
Unfortunately, that only serves to make the problem worse, since it eliminates the competition needed to drive prices down.

I'm not a fan of ISP's but one of the aspects of this issue that always mystifies me is the pervasive expectation that there should be no tie between consumption and cost.
I can think of no other commodity where this is true.

Do you want more gas? You have to pay more.
Do you use more electricity than your neighbor? You have to pay more.
Do you want more food? You have to pay more.

Why is this the one commodity that people expect to pay the same whether they only use the internet for email or they use it to stream 1080p content from Netflix?

Then you add the irrational expectation that an ISP should keep its entire infrastructure running on cutting-edge technology without passing on that constant investment cost to the people who are using it.
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Except when you PAY for 12 gallons of gasoline...you are required by federal law to get 12 gallons of gasoline. No weasel-ish statements on gas pumps stating:

"Offer void where prohibited. 12 gallons of gasoline not available in all areas. Stated volume of gas is maximum volume that may be supplied. Volume supplied will vary depending on time of day and other conditions outside of network control. See our website for terms and conditions and offer details"

At which point you check your gas tank you just paid to fill with 12 gallons of fuel and instead of the 12 gallons you paid for...you find 1 gallon.


You use electricity. You are billed exactly for what you use. So much so that AFAIK it is illegal for you (or anyone) to try and alter you electricity meter on the side your building. Kind of like gasoline.


Food. Guess what? You get what you pay for, and you pay for exactly what you get. You don't have someone at checkout telling you that you're buying too many pints of Ben and Jerry's, so get out....and you owe us an overage fee.
 
gathagan said:
In many locations, ISP's are considered a public utility and regulated by the local PUC.
Unfortunately, that only serves to make the problem worse, since it eliminates the competition needed to drive prices down.

I'm not a fan of ISP's but one of the aspects of this issue that always mystifies me is the pervasive expectation that there should be no tie between consumption and cost.
I can think of no other commodity where this is true.

Do you want more gas? You have to pay more.
Do you use more electricity than your neighbor? You have to pay more.
Do you want more food? You have to pay more.

Why is this the one commodity that people expect to pay the same whether they only use the internet for email or they use it to stream 1080p content from Netflix?

Then you add the irrational expectation that an ISP should keep its entire infrastructure running on cutting-edge technology without passing on that constant investment cost to the people who are using it.
Click to expand...

If this was the case then grandma would be paying five bucks for internet. And it costs ISPs a fraction of a penny per terabyte but some charge $10 per megabyte over the small quota they sell for that $60+/month service.

Fact is we have a very uncompetitive market, we can't even keep up with Lithuania for God's sake. It's not even the slow speeds, the prices are sky high, probably close to 3 times what it could be with proper competition.

And now even the service itself is gonna be gutted by the FCC so that the fox is guarding the hen house. Content producers get to tell their competition how their competing products are gonna be priced and how well they perform.

This is bad news for not only the ISP market, the content market will obviously become the playing field of big players, probably Amazon and Google, we'll see who survives in the long run.

Brace for this eventually at this rate:
net.neutrality.chart_.jpg
 
CRaschNet said:
I find their wording as loophole for more legal bribing of our government offiicals
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As a binary ruling for the entire industry, the congress might get involved.

"Case-by-case" breaks up the public concern and allows the FCC & congress to extort each company individually. Netflix pays FCC & Congress for a favorable ruling and Hulu doesn't. Hulu goes out of business.

Companies are left with the choice of participating in the corruption or die.

But underlying the cost to consumers overall will go up and options will go down and Wallstreet/Comcast will get people to stop cutting the cord. And once people don't care about alternate providers like Netflix or Hulu anymore because they suck, that's when they'll snuff them out completely.
 
The next step is the easy step. Get all their apologists to come out and find ways to hide what they are doing to mitigate public backlash.
 
Wierdo said:
If this was the case then grandma would be paying five bucks for internet. And it costs ISPs a fraction of a penny per terabyte but some charge $10 per megabyte over the small quota they sell for that $60+/month service.

Fact is we have a very uncompetitive market, we can't even keep up with Lithuania for God's sake. It's not even the slow speeds, the prices are sky high, probably close to 3 times what it could be with proper competition.

And now even the service itself is gonna be gutted by the FCC so that the fox is guarding the hen house. Content producers get to tell their competition how their competing products are gonna be priced and how well they perform.

This is bad news for not only the ISP market, the content market will obviously become the playing field of big players, probably Amazon and Google, we'll see who survives in the long run.

Brace for this eventually at this rate:
net.neutrality.chart_.jpg
Click to expand...

Pretty much sums up all I could say and MORE. That pic with the tiered pricing is what they are going for, just look at your cable/direct tv bill and you can see the writing on the wall :(.

I've given up a lot of my internet stuff due to various reasons. Plus the web used to be a smoother experience. Now it's ads out the hind end, more pop ups. Forced video ads etc... Malware and viruses everywhere, and security is so lax it's insane.
 
STrooperTK421 said:
I just wish that for once, someone in our government would actually have the BALLS to tell these greedy stains what they can go do with themselves. Declare the internet a utility and tell the ISP's and anyone else who stands to profit from this to fuck off.

Sadly, this isn't likely to happen, and the internet as we have known it is going to go away. And that saddens me profoundly, but it also scares me. There is WAY MORE to this than just video service...oh no...this is a round-about-fuck-everyone-in-the-ass way of crushing the freedom that the internet has brought to the masses. The old farts are scared, and they are rich, and they get what they want because they know that the majority of the people are shiftless lazy shit-for-brains who will buy whatever dumbshit story they cook up about why this is "good".

I'm disgusted, and powerless, and that is a shit feeling.
Click to expand...

I've seen only one presidential candidate who challenged the status quo. And everyone from every political party and every media source came out to paint the the guy as a looney old man.

A rotting fish stinks from the head. Keep electing "get along" mother fuckers to the big seat, and you get more of the same.
 
Lith1um said:
I've seen only one presidential candidate who challenged the status quo. And everyone from every political party and every media source came out to paint the the guy as a looney old man.

A rotting fish stinks from the head. Keep electing "get along" mother fuckers to the big seat, and you get more of the same.
Click to expand...

It is easy to have opinions when you have chance in hell of actually gaining power.

If he were a serious candidate...you can bet money his stances would change overnight.
 
Wierdo said:
If this was the case then grandma would be paying five bucks for internet. And it costs ISPs a fraction of a penny per terabyte but some charge $10 per megabyte over the small quota they sell for that $60+/month service.

Fact is we have a very uncompetitive market, we can't even keep up with Lithuania for God's sake. It's not even the slow speeds, the prices are sky high, probably close to 3 times what it could be with proper competition.

And now even the service itself is gonna be gutted by the FCC so that the fox is guarding the hen house. Content producers get to tell their competition how their competing products are gonna be priced and how well they perform.

This is bad news for not only the ISP market, the content market will obviously become the playing field of big players, probably Amazon and Google, we'll see who survives in the long run.

Brace for this eventually at this rate:
net.neutrality.chart_.jpg
Click to expand...

Stifle access to the internet and you grant the ability to inhibit freedom of speech. Don't like a movement or an entity? Then all you have to do is make access difficult or cost pprohibitive by throwing up a pay wall.


For example, there are no firearm related shows on Comcast except for it's highest tier. Which means that firearms related companies have restricted access to advertisers, and politically conscious shows like the NRA's "Cam and Company" are segregated from the general public. Like you said, putting the fox in charge of the hen house.
 
Skripka said:
It is easy to have opinions when you have chance in hell of actually gaining power.

If he were a serious candidate...you can bet money his stances would change overnight.
Click to expand...

Since the majority of voters are brain washed to only vote R or D we will never have anything except an R or D. Which means there will never be change because those 2 groups are actually the same single group and they would never let someone into a top spot that does not play ball.
 
Skripka said:
It is easy to have opinions when you have chance in hell of actually gaining power.

If he were a serious candidate...you can bet money his stances would change overnight.
Click to expand...

No chance in hell because everyone is in favor of their own form of status quo. Repubs, and Dems. The parties don't even sweat it anymore, they know they don't have to change, just play the line and choose their words carefully.

If you want change, you need to go with the earth shaker. True change would still face inhibitions and much debate, but the bully pulpit of the presidency would be used to spark public debate for once instead or continually being used to quell it. That type of public debate would do much to advance our society.

If anything, the Obama presidency should have made it painfully evident that "hope and change" are just campaign slogans.
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
Can someone explain how an ISP could give some traffic preferential treatment without discriminating against those that haven't paid them?
Click to expand...

It's simple: if you're in possession of an overabundance of cash, you get a seat at the counter. If you're in possession of an overabundance of jack shit, you might be allowed to take the seat next to the restroom with the odor of urine wafting out of it, if they feel like letting you.

Separate but equal was the acceptable thing in the south for a number of years. The placement of the seats was the only difference between riding at the front or back of the bus. Welcome back to post-slavery indentured servitude and please don't make eye contact with the massa or his daughters...

All sarcasm aside, the current composition of the FCC is not going to do the average American any favors. The monied interests have arguably the greatest influence in our political and social systems that they have ever had in history, thanks in no small part to the recent McCutcheon decision, which was a logical continuation of the thinking behind the Citizens United decision.

I consider myself a free-market capitalist, but even I recognize the inherent flaw in a laissez-faire regulatory system that relies on self-governance while doing nothing to stem the collusion, corruption, and fraud that is running rampant in our society. The last time things were headed in this direction we had the Trust Buster ride the populist wave to power while taking decisive action to prevent the lifestyle that the average American took for granted from being reduced to a worthless existence. There was a lot of truth in Susan Crawford's words when she claimed that the modern telecommunications landscape was tantamount to a New Gilded Age.
 
Lith1um said:
If anything, the Obama presidency should have made it painfully evident that "hope and change" are just campaign slogans.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Is there anything Obama promised on the campaign trail that he hasn't essentially done the exact opposite of?
 
c@Nc3r said:
Since the majority of voters are brain washed to only vote R or D we will never have anything except an R or D. Which means there will never be change because those 2 groups are actually the same single group and they would never let someone into a top spot that does not play ball.
Click to expand...

You don't get it.

Lith1um said:
No chance in hell because everyone is in favor of their own form of status quo. Repubs, and Dems. The parties don't even sweat it anymore, they know they don't have to change, just play the line and choose their words carefully.

If you want change, you need to go with the earth shaker. True change would still face inhibitions and much debate, but the bully pulpit of the presidency would be used to spark public debate for once instead or continually being used to quell it. That type of public debate would do much to advance our society.

If anything, the Obama presidency should have made it painfully evident that "hope and change" are just campaign slogans.
Click to expand...

It is not about parties.

It is about money=speech. Or to put it another way, everyone has a price on their beliefs. Just like the Oculus Rift devs.

Anyone who gets within 200miles of actually being POTUS can be bought, since most USA corporations have more money stockpiled than many entire countries. No one on the national stage actually wants to be an earth shaker, they want the money/influence that comes from power. Grumpy Old Man simply never stood a chance, as he was running on the GOP ticket when he was admittedly anything but a GOP'er. Rest assured, if he ever got with 1/2 a light year of the presidency his strongly held convictions would prove just as malleable to $$$$$$$ as everyone else.
 
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