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FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

nytimes.com

141–150 of 598 posts

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#141
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's partly what happens when such important rules are determined by who is appointed at an executive agency, rather than requiring an act of Congress. The former can be trivially gamed by the party in power after each election, whereas getting Congress to take action on something can be difficult and requires you to first get them motivated to do so at a given moment.

I'd flip it and say its what happens when Congress has been dysfunctional for over a decade. It's not even possible to get a house bill with net neutrality passed without it included 99 other things that will inevitably get the bill punted on forever. Congress could have drafted this anytime if they had seen fit, but they are "too busy" fighting ideology wars.

While I agree Congress is quite dysfunctional, the sheer difficulty with which to get a bill written, passed, and signed into law is by design. Legislation is supposed to take a large amount of deliberation, agreement, and time.

Also consider that this works both ways: If something is passed into law by Congress, it's going to take monumental effort to undo it just like getting it passed was. An example of this is Obamacare, where getting it passed was difficult and revoking it has been difficult.

Likewise, the flippant nature of orders authorized by the Executive Branch is also by design. Such orders are meant primarily to address short-term concerns requiring immediate or expedient attention, not long-term concerns that require thorough deliberation.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If netflix traffic is straining ISPs to the point of requiring hardware upgrades etc., I think it is fair for ISPs to ask them to pay some of that cost.

It isn't netflix traffic it is ISP customer traffic which they pay for. Hardware upgrade, bandwidth costs, and other operating costs are already paid for by the ISP customers. The ISP should not be able to double dip by charging netflix or the customer a second time. If the ISP isn't able to provide the service they advertised and sold they should be investigated and be issuing refunds at the very least. Can't provid…

it's not a double-dip. if a single service is behind load problems and causing general service degradation, I think it is fair to throttle that service.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#143
post #5
post #3

FCC rules... The other day it was FTC and banning non competes, there's also talk right now on the home page regarding KYC and an executive order. I would love for us to be able to get back to making laws in the US. Executive orders and agency rulings are a bad way to run a "democratic republic"

It's worth noting that these agencies and their powers did not spring up out of thin air. Various elected Congress sessions wrote the laws that created and empowered these agencies to create rules. This is a reasonable implementation of a "democratic republic" as Congress still has oversight.

Agencies are not beholden to Congress; they are beholden to the executive branch that creates them.

That is why Nixon created the EPA so that there would not be a Department of the Environment that was out of the hands of executive power.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#144
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's partly what happens when such important rules are determined by who is appointed at an executive agency, rather than requiring an act of Congress. The former can be trivially gamed by the party in power after each election, whereas getting Congress to take action on something can be difficult and requires you to first get them motivated to do so at a given moment.

I'd flip it and say its what happens when Congress has been dysfunctional for over a decade. It's not even possible to get a house bill with net neutrality passed without it included 99 other things that will inevitably get the bill punted on forever. Congress could have drafted this anytime if they had seen fit, but they are "too busy" fighting ideology wars.

[dead]

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't netflix traffic it is ISP customer traffic which they pay for. Hardware upgrade, bandwidth costs, and other operating costs are already paid for by the ISP customers. The ISP should not be able to double dip by charging netflix or the customer a second time. If the ISP isn't able to provide the service they advertised and sold they should be investigated and be issuing refunds at the very least. Can't provid…

it's not a double-dip. if a single service is behind load problems and causing general service degradation, I think it is fair to throttle that service.

It is a double dip. The ISP customer already pays for that bandwidth and internet connection. Asking the customer to pay a second time or asking netflix to pay is clearly double dipping. Trying to call it something else is just silly!

>causing general service degradation

Customers using their internet service they pay for isn't causing service degradation. If the ISP oversold or lied about being able to provide the service they were selling that is another issue. The response to that shouldn't be charging more for a service customers already pay for.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair Congress does some work. They have avoided 2 government shutdowns. They funded the war efforts in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. They passed the infrastructure bill. The reality is, they just don't care about net neutrality. I'm still mad that they haven't passed the bill that gets rid of DST (or rather, gets rid of standard time). Everyone wants it in both parties. Just get it done. Even more annoying is th…

> Even more annoying is the whole Section 174 debacle. Completely killing the field of software engineering in the US. Elaborate?

all expenses, in theory, incurred in connection with software development must now be amortized. Many technology and software companies will face significant increases in their taxable income because they are no longer allowed to deduct certain expenses

https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/tax-and-accountin...

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd flip it and say its what happens when Congress has been dysfunctional for over a decade. It's not even possible to get a house bill with net neutrality passed without it included 99 other things that will inevitably get the bill punted on forever. Congress could have drafted this anytime if they had seen fit, but they are "too busy" fighting ideology wars.

To be fair Congress does some work. They have avoided 2 government shutdowns. They funded the war efforts in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. They passed the infrastructure bill. The reality is, they just don't care about net neutrality. I'm still mad that they haven't passed the bill that gets rid of DST (or rather, gets rid of standard time). Everyone wants it in both parties. Just get it done. Even more annoying is th…

> To be fair Congress does some work. They have avoided 2 government shutdowns. They funded the war efforts in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. They passed the infrastructure bill.

The euphemization in this subthread is a bit out of control. In fact these are 100% partisan issues. The "pro shutdown" and "anti aid/infrastructure" camps who had been blocking progress are uniformly sitting on one side of the aisle, and the progress you are celebrating happened when their party split under duress and aligned with the other side briefly.

That's not "congress" doing some work. That's a "pro work" and "anti work" partisan argument whose answer flips due to intra-GOP drama.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one is paying increased costs because their neighbor is watching netflix, youtube, or browsing reddit Increased bandwidth = Increased costs Who do you think is paying?

The ISP customers already paid for that. The ISP customer already paid for the bandwidth, hardware, and all other costs. Not sure why this is confusing for you. The ISP isn't paying more because Bob next door decides to watch netflix for a few hours a night. >Who do you think is paying? The customer..? Are you really confused about this?

> already paid

In some cases. In other cases, it hasn't even happened yet.

> Are you really confused about this?

I'm not at all confused.

The ISP spends $X to build and maintain infrastructure for Y Gbps internet.

Mobile carriers do the same.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#149

I mean great. I don't really want the things it's trying to ban, so good? But this is sorta like plastic straw bans: 0.0000000001% actual impact, all while making HUGE headlines, while doing absolutely zero to solve root systemic issues: Entrenched Local Monopolies by telco providers. So yeah, good, glad my Nebula won't be slower than my YouTubes, while all along I just wanted to ditch the assholes in the first place…

> glad my Nebula won't be slower than my YouTubes To be fair, wouldn't this still be the case? Google peer with many ISPs, and have a lot of server / networking prowess, so the YouTube experience is normally pretty good across the board. Nebula, on the other hand, is a fairly new player from my understanding.

Yes, YouTube might have better CDN solutions, but ISPs can't unfairly discriminate against Nebula. Nebula is a new player, but presumably they're using CDNs with good reach.

The point isn't that Google can't build a better CDN. The point is that we don't want ISPs creating a situation where they've inked a deal with Google to prevent good performance from YouTube competitors. We don't want a situation where "YouTube is the exclusive 4K video provider on ISP-X."

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#150
post #3

FCC rules... The other day it was FTC and banning non competes, there's also talk right now on the home page regarding KYC and an executive order. I would love for us to be able to get back to making laws in the US. Executive orders and agency rulings are a bad way to run a "democratic republic"

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