
Net Neutrality Fans Rejoice: The FCC Will Reclassify Broadband - rpledge
http://gigaom.com/2010/05/05/net-neutrality-fans-rejoice-the-fcc-will-reclassify-broadband/
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jmtame
for anyone unfamiliar with the classification part, it determines how much
power the fcc has in regulation. they went into appeals because comcast claims
the fcc is overstepping their authority (comcast won, and they're going to go
back to throttling like they were before). according to the Telecommunications
Act of 1996, a "telecommunications service" is:

 _offering of telecommunications for a fee directly to the public, or to such
classes of users as to be effectively available directly to the public,
regardless of the facilities used._

and an "information service" is:

 _the offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing,
transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available
information via telecommunications, and includes electronic publishing, but
does not include any use of any such capability for the management, control,
or operation of a telecommunications system or the management of a
telecommunications service._

a telecommunication service sells the ability to use the coaxial cables. an
information service is responsible for everything beyond that. the loophole is
when an ISP is considered both, in which case they can't be regulated the way
they were meant to be. so comcast, for example, is really a telecomm service,
but enjoys the advantages of an information service (a small ISP called Brand
X started this whole thing by saying ISPs should be considered both, and
that's when the network neutrality debate heated up in 2003).

when ISPs are classified as both "information services" and
"telecommunications services," they cannot be regulated the same way and the
fcc can't do much when they do stuff like deep packet inspection/injection,
port blocking, price discrimination, double dipping, etc.

my personal opinion on the topic has always been this: comcast and other
telecomms own the cables in the ground. they are simply moving bits from point
A to point B, but they can never manipulate any of those bits. they should
never charge you more money to access your bits from youtube, for example. and
they should never slow those bits down, for example, if you're using a non-
comcast application (whether it's youtube, itunes, google search, bittorrent,
or whatever).

~~~
enjo
When their throttling they are not changing the bits, however... they're
simply changing the how and when those bits are delivered. So by your logic,
they should have the right throttle traffic however they want?

My argument: Comcast operates as basically a public utility. They don't
completely own those cables. They dug them in public right of ways with a lot
of help and subsidies from all levels of government. The people have a
legitimate claim to ownership, and thus they have a legitimate claim to not be
screwed by Comcast. They're abusing what is effectively a monopoly and should
be regulated as such.

~~~
jmtame
throttling is effectively slowing the bits down. in comcast's case, they have
been shown to block p2p transfers entirely via packet forgery (comcast pays
sandvine to do this).

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patrickgzill
I am in favor of net neutrality but not sure handing more control to the inept
FCC is the answer.

Look how the effect of the previous attempt at government control/regulation
(1996 Telecommunications Act) led to rapid consolidation of the ISP industry
such that most users have only the choice for highspeed between DSL from the
incumbent phone company or cable modem from the cable company.

Further, in spite of Comcast's costs for bandwidth, etc. dropping in the last
5 years, my price for their service has stayed the same or gone up (most would
consider that evidence of there not being any competition).

~~~
Retric
The 1996 Telecommunications Act repealed regulation which was creating an
artificial secondary market. That's simple deregulation, which is vary
different from what your implying.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996>

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shortformblog
Let's face it, flipping the script to make net neutrality happen is just
sneaky. I know this Congress is fairly vitriolic right now, but this is like
the bureaucratic equivalent of Apple vs. Flash, with some judge somewhere
ready to pull out a "thoughts on net neutrality" card on these jokers.

If you're gonna do it, FCC, do it the right way.

~~~
_delirium
It's weird to flip it, I agree, but it's at least a reversal from an incorrect
to correct position: the original decision to classify ISPs as not providing a
"telecommunications service" was pretty hard to support.

The Supreme Court nearly said as much in 2005 in the _Brand X_ case: they
ruled in favor of the FCC's classification, but essentially only on the
grounds that it was plausible enough that under existing agency-deference
doctrine it could stand, even if wrong, as long as it wasn't totally insane.
And even that only got a 6-3 vote, with 3 members of the court thinking the
classification was _so_ plainly erroneous that it shouldn't survive even a
deferential review. And one of the six who did vote to give its rule
deference, Breyer, admitted it might be "just barely" plausible enough to
pass. (And it wasn't even some sort of pro-regulation liberals who dissented;
Scalia wrote the dissent, on the grounds that the FCC's decision was simply
plainly wrong, by the text of the statute.)

So it seems overall we've at least gotten to a more plausible interpretation
of the statute, which should've been the one the FCC adopted initially.

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hristov
Not smart, IMO. The supreme court will slap them down again. They should just
take net neutrality to congress. I know the telecoms have many congressmen in
their pockets, but it is an election year and nobody likes their cable
company, so it will at least make many congressmen mighty uncomfortable.

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gojomo
Court tells FCC: you don't have this authority under the laws passed by
elected officials.

FCC says: we'll grant ourselves the authority by bureaucratic fiat!

No committee of 5 partisan appointees -- guaranteed by formula to be 3 members
of the president's party, and 2 from the opposition party -- should have this
much power over something as fundamental as "communication".

Would we let the FCC reclassify printing presses as a "transport service", and
thus subject to their regulations about ownership, subsidized access, suitable
proportion of "public interest" content, and naughty words?

Do we want the internet to be as diverse as unregulated books and magazines,
or as pandering to the-powers-that-be as FCC-regulated broadcast TV?

~~~
aaronblohowiak
You are noising the point. The court doesn't want the FCC regulating info
seevices like transport services, which makes sense. So, the FCC is saying
"you're right" to the court and is treating broadband as a transport service,
which it is. Broadband is more like a telephone call than a stream of ticker
updates.

~~~
gojomo
Interactive any-to-any broadband is more like speech itself, or a free press,
than it is like either a telephone call or a TV station.

~~~
_delirium
A provider of retail last-mile internet service is much more like a provider
of retail last-mile telephone lines, though. Often it's even the _same_
physical line!

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symesc
Trying to think what would do more for democracy on the Internet than this?

Imagine Facebook as an ISP.

Shiver.

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araneae
Before they rejoice perhaps they should consider that the main function of the
FCC since its inception has been to censor the airwaves.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
That is a nice story, but it isn't true. The FCC has largely been the police
of the electromagnetic spectrum. Certifying people and devices, regulating
transmission power and frequencies, the FCC has taken care of the limited
public property of the spectrum, attempting to promote the public good. While
the definition of public good controversially includes notions of decency,
that is a small part of the job.

~~~
grandalf
What you say may be true, but that doesn't mean that the FCC isn't a one stop
shop for lobbying groups who wish to censor speech.

Imagine how HTML6 adoption will be blocked because the FCC will want to get
its burocratic oomph into a spec that requires webmasters to specify whether a
site is G, PG, PG13, NC17, etc.

Just google for Michael Powell quotes and you'll see that the FCC should be
feared.

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grandalf
The FCC should be renamed the NSP (nipple slip police).

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stretchwithme
This whole matter should be left to the marketplace and to contracts. If you
don't like the way a service is run, get a different one.

Regulations try to get a more optimum combination of costs and features given
current conditions, but often what they do is prevent alternatives from
developing.

~~~
jmtame
sounds intuitive, but it's actually the opposite. when telecomms like comcast
don't have to lease their lines out to other ISPs, there's nowhere else to go.
the end-result is that any given person, if lucky, has only one or two places
they can get high-speed internet from (att, verizon, comcast). and the
redlining practices alone decrease broadband penetration, so a lot of people
can't get to it.

to go one step further, telecomms will sue any municipality that tries to
install their own fiber optics network as if it were a public utility. even if
an entire city supports it and is willing to pay for it, telecomms will ensure
that it can't happen, as was the case with monticello.

there are cases where regulation is necessary to prevent an oligopoly and
encourage competition. right now, the tables are tipped favorably (imo
unfairly) for the telecomms.

~~~
stretchwithme
I think there's ATT and satellite, so not sure they are no other options.

When I think of the free market, I don't mean the present situation. This is
not a free market. Cities set up exclusive contracts with cable providers like
comcast.

In a free market, people would be banding together to negotiate for better
terms and to lower infrastructure costs, but not at a city-wide level where
they are frozen into the solution negotiated by grafty politicians.

I don't pretend to know how a truly non-coercive free market would play out,
but I imagine condo home owner associations being able to choose from a
variety of options.

They already do so for other services and would probably do the same for
utilities if we didn't have the current system of regulated monopolies.

In a truly free market, the type of suits you refer to wouldn't work.
Municipalities wouldn't even be involved.

We can add more coercion to the system, but I think undoing the coercion we
already have is a better long term approach. Of course, its not often easy to
see that path, especially when it looks so politically impossible.

