
Appeals court upholds FCC's net neutrality order - textdog
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/court-upholds-obama-backed-net-neutrality-rules-224309
======
grellas
How we got to the point where utility-style regulation is seen as the key to
ensuring a free and open internet is a true puzzle.

Utility-style regulation gives regulators plenary authority over the internet
- meaning full and complete. Their power to do this or to forbid that is
highly discretionary and essentially boundless.

This in turn gives a gatekeeper role to the regulators: you play by their
rules or you don't play. And that means they have final say over what happens
across the internet, at least within U.S. jurisdiction.

So today they say net neutrality rules.

Tomorrow maybe it is price controls in the name of consumer fairness. Or maybe
it is mandated compliance with government snooping orders in the name of
national security. Or who knows what not?

Why not? With a utility-style regulatory framework, you essentially have a
form of administrative law run wild, legally speaking. Standards are
exceedingly vague, power is wildly broad, and (in the end) he who has the most
power and pull to control the regulators winds up having the final say over
what the law is or is not as it affects the internet.

This is the exact antithesis of the largely hands-off idea of what the
government could do with respect to the internet over the past several
decades.

Of course law tends to conform in the short term to what people want and,
today, most people truly do want a free and open internet. Therefore, the risk
of any existential threat to internet freedom is either minimal or non-
existent _in the short term_.

But if your idea of preserving maximum internet freedom is in effect to place
a loaded gun to its head and then declare it is not a problem because it is
the good guys who control it and who therefore will use it only for good
purposes, then you have what you want with utility-style regulation of the
internet.

It might just work great as long as the good guys are in control. But what
happens when it changes some day? And, if you think it cannot, then you have
far, far more faith in human nature than I can possibly summon.

Welcome to the brave new world.

~~~
thenewwazoo
I think you're ignoring the very real problems with the Internet
infrastructure while you raise alarms about prospective problems. The reason
utility-style regulation is a good thing is because the Internet is a utility.
And like most other utilities, natural monopolies arise and the free market is
distorted. There is already a gun to the head of the Internet, but instead of
being putatively controlled by the populous at large it is controlled by
entrenched rent-seeking oligopolists who are beholden only to shareholders
that do not care about the function of the market.

Yes, there is a risk that the regulators will declare any number of rules for
any number of reasons. Yes, regulatory capture of regulators is a real
problem. The solution to these two problems is not to cede control to
multinational corporations. Your lack of faith in human nature should extend
to all humans, not just ones who are the apparatus of the state.

~~~
cderwin
> Your lack of faith in human nature should extend to all humans, not just
> ones who are the apparatus of the state.

It's not that there's some reason to preternaturally trust corporations and to
distrust the state, it's that the apparatus of the state is infinitely more
powerful. If a corporation acts unethically, you lose the benefits and service
it provides. If the state acts unethically, you lose your freedom and/or your
life. That's a colossal difference.

Likewise, if the choice is between Google controlling access to the internet
and Chinese-style regulation controlling access to the internet, there's
really no choice at all: who would pick Chinese internet service over Google
Fiber? And make no mistake: with utility-style regulation the only boundary
between the FCC and the PRC is "the people", and if this year's election has
shown anything, they are a fickle and largely ignorant bunch. "Utility-style
regulation" isn't an epithet because the internet shouldn't be treated as a
utility; it's an epithet because utility regulation over the past hundred
years has been absolutely disastrous, enabling the supreme power of
corporations, not limiting it. It's really, really sad to see the internet
falling into the hands of telecoms and the FCC.

~~~
jblow
"absolutely disastrous"?

I am 44 years old, which means I remember growing up at a time when you were
not allowed to own a telephone -- because AT&T exercised its corporate
monopoly to control what you could plug into your AT&T phone line, and they
would only permit that to be an AT&T phone, and they would not ever sell you
an AT&T phone, they would only rent you one at an exorbitant price. And they
didn't bother to provide you any variety in models, because why would they?
There's one phone, that is what you get.

Also, if you wanted to call someone in a different area code, then I hope you
are ready to shell out some cash...

If it weren't for state-exercised power, it is quite possible that things
would still be this way.

I do not consider today's situation a disaster at all, relatively speaking.
(For sure there are still many un-ideal things about it.)

~~~
cookiecaper
To resolve the matter of being unallowed to plug anything non-AT&T into AT&T
phone lines, you can just make a law stating that anything that can operate
compatibly on the network is allowed to participate, something that allows
consumers to bring their own device. You don't have to have utility-style
control, nor do you have to break up the company, to resolve that particular
issue.

~~~
ethbro
This is exactly what happened _because of the FCC_ in 1968.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone)

~~~
josh2600
I was about to post this and say that the parent comment does not remember
this because it happened 4 years before their birth.

~~~
ethbro
Tbh, it happened a number of years before my birth as well, but some of us
choose to learn the history of computation / networking. ;-)

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StavrosK
Can someone explain what this means? The term "net neutrality" has been
muddled so much that I can't tell if it means what it actually says, or if
it's distorted doublespeak that actually means the opposite.

Is this decision good or bad for us?

~~~
wmeredith
This is the core of what was upheld:

"No Blocking: broadband providers may not block access to legal content,
applications, services, or non-harmful devices.

"No Throttling: broadband providers may not impair or degrade lawful Internet
traffic on the basis of content, applications, services, or non-harmful
devices.

"No Paid Prioritization: broadband providers may not favor some lawful
Internet traffic over other lawful traffic in exchange for consideration of
any kind—in other words, no "fast lanes." This rule also bans ISPs from
prioritizing content and services of their affiliates."

This is a good thing. Big telcos have been trying to gut the FCC of its power
ever since they issued their Open Internet Order:
[https://www.fcc.gov/general/open-internet](https://www.fcc.gov/general/open-
internet)

Next stop is the supreme court if they continue to push back against it.

~~~
tzs
> Next stop is the supreme court if they continue to push back against it

More likely the next stop is Congress. Reversing basically everything the FCC
has done with the internet and making sure the FCC does not do any such things
again is a major goal of the Republicans and they currently have majorities in
the House and the Senate.

Their presumptive presidential nominee, Trump, is also against net neutrality,
seeing it as a liberal attack on conservatives: "Obama’s attack on the
internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness
Doctrine. Will target conservative media" [1].

[1]
[https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/53260835850816716...](https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/532608358508167168?lang=en)

~~~
st3v3r
I can understand why Republicans don't like net neutrality. I cannot fathom at
all the argument made by Trump that a law requiring equal access to both
liberal and conservative media, not to mention everything in between and
outside, is going to "target conservative media". Is he saying that if people
have equal access to all, that they will reject conservative media?

~~~
rashkov
You're mistaken if you think that trump is presenting any kind of rational
argument. Instead he is appealing to his voter base, many of whom feel that
the mainstream media and Silicon Valley companies are silencing conservative
viewpoints. See search terms: "Google biased towards Hillary", "Facebook
censoring conservative news", "conservative msm", "conservative lamestream
media".

------
billiam
Second to last nail in the coffin. Yay. Sometimes the interests of hundreds of
millions of people can in fact outweigh the interests of two corporations.
With so many things about our society under attack, this is good news. attack,

~~~
762236
An alternative way to look at it: the value in the network is due to the
networking effects, which is contributed by the network members --- the value
provided by the two corporations is slight in comparison. This is the same as
in property value --- a McDonalds located in downtown San Francisco is quite a
different proposition to one located in the middle of a prairie, and the value
isn't in the building, but the availability of patrons that comes from a
flourishing neighborhood.

------
bcheung
What are the specifics in regard to peering? It seemed like with Netflix there
was some confusion and FUD and it was hard to know the exact facts.

Normally as a business you are required to purchase bandwidth from bandwidth
providers. I would assume this would still stand.

What counts as throttling? If an ISP has multiple peering connections with
backbone providers are they forced to upgrade their hardware to compensate for
all the traffic coming from their peer? If so, what counts as sufficient
quality?

If they upgrade some peering connections and not others is that breaking Net
Neutrality?

My understanding, not sure if it is correct, was that Netflix had traffic on
an Internet backbone and Comcast was selectively throttling traffic within the
peering connection based on whether it was Netflix traffic. I can see how that
is discriminatory and wrong.

Anyone have more details about how all this works specifically?

------
russnewcomer
Generally glad that the order was upheld. I do wish that zero rating was more
clearly defined, but regulation is just as much a reactive task as a proactive
one, and it will be interesting to see how the ISPs use that tool in their
toolbox. My suspicion is that we would see general price increases but then a
'zero rating' for, say, streaming video, making it seem like a good deal.
Video seems cheaper but is really just subsidized by the rest of the content.

I see a parallel there to how the health insurance situation in America seems
to have played out over the last few years from the view point of the average
middle class developer.

~~~
textdog
Really, really good point! The FCC is deciding the outcome of those plans now,
groups are calling for an open process to the decision so that there isn't any
bad ruling before people can weigh in and all sides looked at.

------
shmerl
Good! What about efforts to repeal monopolistic state bans on municipal
broadband? FCC was also in the middle of some court cases about it. Is there
any progress?

------
dreamdu5t
Can someone explain why T-Mobile is legally allowed to provide free streaming
for YouTube and Netflix? Didn't net neutrality prevent that? Or am I just out
of the loop?

The thing is... I _like_ them preferentially treating YouTube and Netflix
traffic by not counting it towards my bandwidth limit. The "fair" alternative
sucks: I would simply not stream on my phone anymore because it would be too
expensive.

~~~
fucking_tragedy
The fair alternative could be to not count any streaming video service traffic
towards your data usage.

~~~
dreamdu5t
And how would T-Mobile be compensated for that? AFAIK, the reason they're able
to do this is because Netflix, Youtube, etc. pays them to be part of the
program.

~~~
pianowow
It's in T-Mobile's interest to do this for its own network management. The
unlimited video is of much lower quality, using less bandwidth. The only
agreement between T-Mobile and Netflix/YouTube is for T-Mobile to be allowed
to control which quality is served over their network.

------
jojohack
Does this mean I can finally watch HBO GO on my PS4 via my Comcast account?

~~~
ascagnel_
Nope. It means that, should you ever be able to log in to HBO GO on your PS4
with your Comcast account, Comcast won't be able to do much to degrade the
stream.

The authentication of pay services is outside the purvue of Net Neutrality.

------
bcheung
How does this relate to high frequency trading and paying more to get access
to servers closer to the exchange?

Is that paid prioritization / a fast lane? Or is that just purchasing a better
plan?

Where is the line drawn?

~~~
tjohns
Usually this is done over private leased lines, either as a dedicated fiber
run or on a switched network.

If you're worried about tens of milliseconds worth of latency, you don't route
your traffic over the public internet.

------
sova
Hurray for common sense!

------
nemock
I think it'll be a while before we are out of the woods on this one. The
culprits continue to thumb their nose at the FCC and openly challenge their
authority.

------
daveheq
The politicians know they can never get past the technologists; not because
they make them so much money, but because they're smarter than they are.

------
pmoriarty
Can ISPs still charge for more bandwidth?

~~~
jimktrains2
Yes? Why would you think they couldn't? They just can't change you more or
change your bandwidth based on the services you use.

What I really want is something akin to guarantees on the bandwidth, or
something like 95%ile billing. Why should I pay for something that I'm not
being given (and yes, before people start saying it's legal because of the
contract, I'm not arguing that, I'm saying they're selling 50, I'm getting 20,
consistently.)

------
dang
Url changed from [http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/14/11487124/fcc-net-
neutralit...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/14/11487124/fcc-net-neutrality-
open-internet-order-appeal-ruling-lawsuit), which points to this.

------
droopybuns
Tom Wheeler says this:

"Notably, the Open Internet Order does not affect zero-rating services like
T-Mobile's BingeOn or Verizon's Go90, which are intentionally left out of the
scope of the order. "I can argue there are some aspects of [zero rating] that
are good, and I can argue there’s some aspects of it that are not so good,"
Wheeler told The Verge in an interview in March. "The job of the regulator is
to figure out, 'Okay, now how do I deal with this?'"

Outrageous behavior, followed up by outrageous commentary. This FCC is out of
control. How does anyone invest in wireless with regulators like this? Is Tom
Wheeler even aware of the chilling affect of commentary like this?

Edit: The quote above is from the fine article.

Wmeredith: I'm talking about is Tom Wheeler, chair of the FCC. In this
particular quote, the regulator of the laws is saying (at least as far as I
can tell), that he's going to pick and choose which players he regulates.
Should I assume you're arguing that my quote from the article is fud, or is it
my commentary? Or my interpretation of it?

I'm not being a troll. I have an honest disagreement that this is the right
thing to do. Would you invest in any climate with a regulator who says things
like this? It seems wildly more risky to me.

~~~
exhilaration
Can someone give us a quick summary of why the two mentioned services are
problematic?

~~~
gervase
I believe the gist of the argument is that zero-rating is essentially reverse
prioritization.

In other words, if T-Mobile is giving Pandora privileges on the network that
any mom-and-pop startup streaming service doesn't have access to, does it
really matter if T-Mobile is charging the customer for that? Since it still
effectively stifles innovation by new players (a core tenet of Wheeler's net
neutrality argument).

~~~
criddell
If Pandora pays T-Mobile to zero-rate their traffic, that's a problem, right?

Is there a problem if Pandora were to offer an overage-fee rebate benefit to
T-Mobile customers? It's effectively the same thing, except they are paying
end users rather than the middle-man. I personally don't see a problem with
that and that makes me think that the simpler option of just paying the
middle-man (T-Mobile) for zero-rating should be okay as well.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Is there a problem if Pandora were to offer an overage-fee rebate benefit to
> T-Mobile customers?

Yes, because it's clearly the same thing, and it has the same problem.

Suppose the ISP owns or has some "unrelated" partnership with Pandora. Now the
money Pandora is "paying" is just money the ISP is passing back to them under
the table through the other relationship, and the ISP is really only
disadvantaging Pandora's competitors because the ISP stands to collect some of
the rents from thwarting competition.

~~~
tzs
1\. Suppose that I run a subscription music service, and I have no
relationship with T-Mobile other than the fact that some of my customers use
T-Mobile to access my service.

I track each of my customer's usage, figure out from IP addresses how much of
their usage was on their T-Mobile connection, and rebate them my estimate of
what T-Mobile will charge them for that usage.

Is there a problem with this? If so, how would you address it?

2\. Similar to #1, except now my subscription service includes a bandwidth
limit. A given subscription plan is allowed a specified amount of music data
per month from my servers. Again, I have no relationship with T-Mobile or any
other carrier other than some of my customers using those carriers to access
my servers.

Each month I buy each customer a prepaid data card for their carrier with
sufficient bandwidth to cover one month of their subscription to my service.

Is there a problem? If so, how would you address it?

~~~
AnthonyMouse
The issue is that nobody would ever do this because it's against their own
interests. If one ISP charges per byte and you offer to pay the charge, you've
deprived that ISP's customers of the incentive to switch to an ISP that
doesn't do that (which you then wouldn't have to pay for) _and_ given every
ISP that doesn't do that an incentive to start, so that you have to pay for
them too. And then the ISPs can raise their fees without having to worry about
losing customers because the people paying aren't the people deciding which
ISP to use. It's economic suicide. Which is why it's rational to presume that
anybody who suggests it is in bed with the ISP, which is then the obvious
antitrust problem.

But let's just put the final nail in the coffin here. Does the music service
want to pay their customers $1 for every gigabyte of music their customers
listen to? Fine, pay it regardless of what the customer's ISP charges for
bandwidth, the same amount to any customer on any ISP. If doing that is
profitable then it's profitable regardless of what the ISP charges the
customer, it's better for the music service because it doesn't give the ISP
any pricing leverage on bandwidth charges, and if paying the customer money to
encourage them to use the service works for customers with per-byte billing
then it should work just as well for customers with unlimited plans, so the
proposal will earn them even more customers.

