Net neutrality going down in flames as FCC votes to kill Title II rules

[Dezerte]

the only people that have to worry are the ones that stream video. being online and playing wow takes nothing.

Bandwidth may not be important for gaming, but latency and packet loss is. They probably could do the same thing there if they wanted to, offering "premium gaming packages".

[Unhinged]

the only people that have to worry are the ones that stream video. being online and playing wow takes nothing.

It may take nothing. But if it can be throttled and money made out of it, they will do it.

[Deleted]

But they're a company, you can't force them to host content they don't want to. /s

[Themius]

If you don't have monopoly you want the consumers satisfied to keep the investers happy.

which means all you do is try to milk customers as much as possible just to the breaking point... and comcast and verizon in areas have a virtual monopoly.

[Vash The Stampede]

Some of you are really fucking paranoid.

In what world have you been living where your internet has got worse day by day because of more and more bureaucracy? Nothing will change, speeds will continue to increase and packages will become more and more competitive, as has been the case for the last 25 years worldwide.

No one cares if you watch midget porn either, you are not important.

That would work in a healthy competitive system, but the internet is not one of them. ISPs are an oligopoly, which means they really don't have to compete for your money. Add to it that most big ISPs own the media you watch, and cord cutting is increasing then you have a conflict of interest. They make far more money from you watching Television than they do from your internet connection.

Look at what happened with Verizon and Netflix, where Netflix had to pay money to get unrestricted bandwidth to their customers. Which ISPs still do today cause fuck net neutrality, as some people I know need VPNs to make things go faster cause it gets around that restriction.

Of course they'll increase speeds but that doesn't mean they won't introduce data caps and throttled speeds to certain websites. With cord cutting at a 5x increase from last year in Q1, you can bet ISP's are going to find ways to make you pay to recuperate from the loss of TV sales. I also don't need packages, just an internet connection please.

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But they're a company, you can't force them to host content they don't want to. /s

They're not hosting anything, unless they're paid to do so. For example Netflix will pay ISPs to put servers in areas to help speed up streaming. This is what Netflix did with Verizon. But it turns out Verizon will still throttle those servers anyway, hence why a VPN is a good idea.

An ISP is a pipe to a backbone and nothing more. A host is a server sitting far far away from an ISP. They're the freeway, not the parking garage.

[mauserr]

Meanwhile I'm sitting in Poland (top kek this country, really) with a 1 gbit connection (no phone, tv or any other bullshit bundle) for a mere 30$/month fee with unlimited acccess to everything my deviant heart desires, no throttling whatsoever. Holy shit.


God bless America XD

[Scathbais]

If you like using the internet freely and not overpaying for every single damn thing you take for granted, then you would not be saying that.

What evidence do you have that what you wrote has ever happened and that heavy handed regulation is better than our current system?

[Reachie10]

How fucking greedy are these fucking fuckers.

Sooner or later it's all going to come crashing down on these fucking greedy fucks.

[Kujako]

What evidence do you have that what you wrote has ever happened and that heavy handed regulation is better than our current system?

Comcast reduced the speed of connections to Netflix and held user access ransom until Netflix paid them. This has happened. And what evidence do you have that "don't treat your customers like dicks and double charge them" is heavy handed regulation?

[Gamer8585]

Disappointing, but not surprising given that Pai and O'Riely a thinly veiled corporate shills, and the administration seems to be determined to appoint the worst people possible to lead federal departments. Wheeler turned out to be a godsend and really did his job well (moved a little to slowly on things, but I respected the reasoning for it). Pai just wants to undermine any gains made in the last couple years, and turn the interent back into corporate rent seeking.

In speeches he's given his logic makes no sense, and doesn't survive fact checking.

Now, I'm not saying FCC Chairman Ajit Pai should be drawn and quartered and his remains thrown to half-starved wolves, but I wouldn't stop anyone from doing it.

[Scathbais]

Why are you the way you are? Please tell me how Title II was heavy handed or what awesome innovation was being stifled by Title II other than ISPs developing new and interesting ways to bone America in the ass?

There is no evidence to support your position that Internet providers are doing anything that required Federal oversight. Why don't you go read the 333 page Title II law and see the mounds and mounds of regulations, fees and oversight that could be piled on to Internet providers now that they are subject to Title II.

Everything necessary for the government to stifle innovation is written in those pages.

Section 201: gives the FCC the ability to compel ISPs to provide services that they (as private companies) might not choose to otherwise offer. This section also deems unlawful and service or charge that is deemed "unjust or unreasonable". Who gets to determine what is just and reasonable? An unelected regulator who may or may not have a bias is given absolute authority to make this determination. This means that instead of allowing marked competition to set prices a regulator sets prices based on what they consider "just and reasonable".

Section 208: allows people to file complaints against an ISP without actually having to show harm was done to them. In other words, any lawyer can go trolling around the country and sue ISPs and ISPs can harass each other without having to shown actual harm done.

Section 210: allows government to ask ISPs for free access and services.

And finally, I give you Section 223, which gives the FCC ultimate control over anything you or I want to broadcast over the internet. This section alone should have you and anyone else who wants an open and free internet scared shitless:

Whoever in interstate or foreign communications by means of a telecommunications device knowingly makes, creates, or solicits, and initiates the transmission of, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication which is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent, with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another person shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

This gives the FCC unlimited control to subjectively decide what is indecent or obscene and what constitutes annoyance or harassment. For example, you could complain to the FCC that my first post was indecent and designed to harass you. They could agree and fine me because I sent it through the internet. Alternatively, one of Trumps goons could decide that you calling Trump a fascist in an mmo-c post is obscene and harassing and you could go to jail.

You could read the whole law, there are a lot more sections, but the open-ended control given to the FCC by Title II is frightening.

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Comcast reduced the speed of connections to Netflix and held user access ransom until Netflix paid them. This has happened. And what evidence do you have that "don't treat your customers like dicks and double charge them" is heavy handed regulation?

Netflix was at fault here. And Comcast did NOT throttle Netflix. ISPs as a courtesy were opening up additional ports when the ones Netflix were using bottlenecked. Comcast and Verizon felt they were being taken advantage of by Netflix and stopped being courteous. That is in no way throttling data speeds. Netflix was being greedy and Comcast stopped accomodating the greed.

Facts are facts.

[Deathquoi]

There is no evidence to support your position that Internet providers are doing anything that required Federal oversight. Why don't you go read the 333 page Title II law and see the mounds and mounds of regulations, fees and oversight that could be piled on to Internet providers now that they are subject to Title II.

Everything necessary for the government to stifle innovation is written in those pages.

Section 201: gives the FCC the ability to compel ISPs to provide services that they (as private companies) might not choose to otherwise offer. This section also deems unlawful and service or charge that is deemed "unjust or unreasonable". Who gets to determine what is just and reasonable? An unelected regulator who may or may not have a bias is given absolute authority to make this determination. This means that instead of allowing marked competition to set prices a regulator sets prices based on what they consider "just and reasonable".

Section 208: allows people to file complaints against an ISP without actually having to show harm was done to them. In other words, any lawyer can go trolling around the country and sue ISPs and ISPs can harass each other without having to shown actual harm done.

Section 210: allows government to ask ISPs for free access and services.

And finally, I give you Section 223, which gives the FCC ultimate control over anything you or I want to broadcast over the internet. This section alone should have you and anyone else who wants an open and free internet scared shitless:



This gives the FCC unlimited control to subjectively decide what is indecent or obscene and what constitutes annoyance or harassment. For example, you could complain to the FCC that my first post was indecent and designed to harass you. They could agree and fine me because I sent it through the internet. Alternatively, one of Trumps goons could decide that you calling Trump a fascist in an mmo-c post is obscene and harassing and you could go to jail.

You could read the whole law, there are a lot more sections, but the open-ended control given to the FCC by Title II is frightening.

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Netflix was at fault here. And Comcast did NOT throttle Netflix. ISPs as a courtesy were opening up additional ports when the ones Netflix were using bottlenecked. Comcast and Verizon felt they were being taken advantage of by Netflix and stopped being courteous. That is in no way throttling data speeds. Netflix was being greedy and Comcast stopped accomodating the greed.

Facts are facts.

What's the address of your office on K Street? Is it nice? What did you have for dinner the last time you went out to eat with Verizon and Comcast execs? I hope you got the surf and turf.

There's plenty of evidence to support my position. Literally the article you linked supports my position, you just misread it.

There's only one group that benefits from this development and that's broadband giants like Comcast. Nobody else wins, and Verizon recently said Title II wasn't hurting their business significantly. So really, why are you against it? I mean, besides the fact that you clearly enjoy eating whatever nonsense the Republicans spoon feed you.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Lol Trickle down internet economics. They really love to use trickle down.

[Acidbaron]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...itle-ii-rules/

How is this going to effect europe?

It's really not going to effect us in a bad way, it will make it even so that Europe becomes an even more important market for companies effected negatively by this like Netflix.

Technically it could also effect the information you get from certain sites as it could be more controlled but i don't think we'll see that happen since spreading propaganda and controlling information is no longer really done in the west by censorship.


I still like how no reason is given as to why this is undone by the Trump administration other than "obummer did it!"

[Scathbais]

What's the address of your office on K Street? Is it nice? What did you have for dinner the last time you went out to eat with Verizon and Comcast execs? I hope you got the surf and turf.

There's plenty of evidence to support my position. Literally the article you linked supports my position, you just misread it.

There's only one group that benefits from this development and that's broadband giants like Comcast. Nobody else wins, and Verizon recently said Title II wasn't hurting their business significantly. So really, why are you against it? I mean, besides the fact that you clearly enjoy eating whatever nonsense the Republicans spoon feed you.

The fact that you can read that article and conclude that you are still correct is baffling. Anyway, I tried, and you respond with personal attacks to try to discredit my views. A bullying tactic taken right out of the liberal playbook. It is amazing to me that you are so biased in your beliefs that me giving you the facts and you still believe in untruths. I am out!

[Draco-Onis]

The fact that you can read that article and conclude that you are still correct is baffling. Anyway, I tried, and you respond with personal attacks to try to discredit my views. A bullying tactic taken right out of the liberal playbook. It is amazing to me that you are so biased in your beliefs that me giving you the facts and you still believe in untruths. I am out!

The fact is that verizon, comcast and other ISPS have stated on their conference calls that the new regulations have had zero impact on investments which is the argument that Pai is using to change the standard. Second the narrative of innovation and growth is false since we still pay the highest prices for the slowest internet in the modern world. Third there is zero competition in this industry hence giving an industry which already has a captive audience this much power will result in making it much worse.

Anyone with a ounce of common sense understands that this is a play for telecom companies to milk additional revenues to make up for the profit loss from cord cutters. They know long term they cannot make the obscene profits from TV packages so they want to find another way to screw their customers.

[Deathquoi]

The fact that you can read that article and conclude that you are still correct is baffling. Anyway, I tried, and you respond with personal attacks to try to discredit my views. A bullying tactic taken right out of the liberal playbook. It is amazing to me that you are so biased in your beliefs that me giving you the facts and you still believe in untruths. I am out!

Well I could take a tactic out of the Republican playbook but sucking the nozzle of corporate interests doesn't appeal to me. Bye!

[Deleted]

It's really not going to effect us in a bad way, it will make it even so that Europe becomes an even more important market for companies effected negatively by this like Netflix.

Actually, Netflix has one of the most robust distributed networks in the world, built on top of Amazon AWS. Netflix customers from around the world are already connecting to nearest datacenter. Only US customers are connecting to US datacenters. See https://media.netflix.com/en/company...loud-migration

I hope more companies will follow.

The only obstacle (other than website being tied to 1 unscalable database, which affects quite a lot of websites) is AnyCast DNS (routing to nearest datacenter based on latency) that is expensive, but there is similar service from Amazon that is very cheap. Like $5/month cheap. Which means any company can afford it. Unfortunately AWS Route 53 is the only latency based routing service available today, so companies are pretty much limited to using AWS, which isn't too expensive, but not cheap enough.

Net neutrality is US specific thing. The rest of the world isn't affected.

[Nurasu]

No. You think you get it but you don't. They are charging for a service. Then, in addition to charging for that service, they want to charge again for that service. They are literally charging content providers twice for the same bandwidth.

They are not providing the same service to Netlfix as they are to your grandma. They're just not. Streaming services, last I checked were approaching 70% of bandwidth use during peak hours. 70%. And they should pay the same rate as MMO-C for it's one website why? If Netflix believes they are being deceptive about the service being provided, they should take it up with the FTC not the FCC, and the FCC should not straddle the industry with a law from the 1930s that opens the doors to all kinds of issues down the road. The best option would be for Congress to actually pass new legislation that makes more sense for ISPs to preserve net neutrality, but for some reason they seem unwilling to do so.

[Deathquoi]

They are not providing the same service to Netlfix as they are to your grandma. They're just not. Streaming services, last I checked were approaching 70% of bandwidth use during peak hours. 70%. And they should pay the same rate as MMO-C for it's one website why? If Netflix believes they are being deceptive about the service being provided, they should take it up with the FTC not the FCC, and the FCC should not straddle the industry with a law from the 1930s that opens the doors to all kinds of issues down the road. The best option would be for Congress to actually pass new legislation that makes more sense for ISPs to preserve net neutrality, but for some reason they seem unwilling to do so.

Do you think Netflix is on the fucking Comcast digital starter package or something?

How come Republicans always want to complain that laws are old and antiquated unless it's the 2nd Amendment? Title II didn't stop telephone providers from thriving through most of the 20th century until they were rendered obsolete by mobile phones and VoIP. Title II isn't stopping Verizon and Comcast from making money or investing in their services. You can regurgitate Republican and telecom lobbyist talking points all you like and you'll still be wrong.