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Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

arstechnica.com

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Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#41

Post by unfunco »

pearjuice wrote: post #31

How can something or someone be half-dead? Life is a binary thing, you are either YES (1) alive or NO (0) dead. I fail to comprehend how any respectable (tech) journalist would call something "half-dead". It implies there is a state between being alive and death when this is clearly not the case.

I don't think this tangent adds much to the intended discussion, and I feel you're missing the point of the original post. There is much more to talk about here than the definition of death. However; I would like to both humour and disagree with you, I don't think there is an agreed position of what it really means to be alive. Is someone in a vegetative state really alive? If a human is on their deathbed with absolutely no chance of recovery, although they're not technically dead, they're not really alive either. There is most definitely a transition.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#42

Post by rayiner »

VLM wrote: post #26
kolbe wrote: post #6

Intuitively, I would have thought that this would be horrible news for content providers/distributors, and great news for wireless carriers. However, today, Google, Facebook, Amazon &etc are flying, while Verizon and AT&T are falling. Does anyone in the industry know what this is all about, and what importance this decision really has on the future of mobile?

Note that your flying providers are huge. The hope of network neutrality is to turn the networks into gatekeepers to eliminate competition. So say I want to create in my garage, an online store to compete with Amazon selling in the pet rock market. Oh what a pity, all your online shopping traffic got dropped at our border routers. We can "fix things" for you for a modest fee, just like Amazon. Of course we have a min…

> Oh you say you can't pay $50M out of your garage? Well our internet isn't for people like you anymore.

The fact that it doesn't work that way already is largely just an accident of history, and I don't know if its necessary to keep that status quo artificially. Small entities are just in a bad leverage position, especially when their "product" depends heavily on someone else's very expensive and hard to reproduce infrastructure. Look at the app market. The people selling the infrastructure (Apple, Samsung) make all the money, because lots of people can write apps but very few can build cell phones. That's the natural state of things.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#43

Post by ilyanep »

mjmahone17 wrote: post #11

What the court is saying is that, if the FCC refuses to classify broadband providers as common carriers, then, because they neither receive the same protections as common carriers nor have the same responsibilities, they can't be regulated as if they were common carriers. The FCC could change their rules to treat broadband suppliers as common carriers. However, that's something that big-name broadband providers don't…

What are the other ramifications of being classified as a common carrier?

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#44

Post by zem »

macspoofing wrote: post #39
gretful wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

politics before ethics. sigh, it was always thus, it shall always be.

I understand your point, but I just don't see the ethical implications. Net neutrality, may be important, but it is a legal directive. Not supporting, or actively working to abolish net neutrality, isn't unethical.

without net neutrality we get an internet where the rich get preferential treatment, and where providers can pick and choose between people using their services. how is working towards that not unethical?

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#45

Post by rayiner »

zem wrote: post #44
macspoofing wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your point, but I just don't see the ethical implications. Net neutrality, may be important, but it is a legal directive. Not supporting, or actively working to abolish net neutrality, isn't unethical.

without net neutrality we get an internet where the rich get preferential treatment, and where providers can pick and choose between people using their services. how is working towards that not unethical?

The rich get the treatment they can pay for, and most providers give better service to those who can afford to pay more. I can understand the objection to that at a meta level, but I don't see the need to single out the internet for special consideration.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#46

Post by saalweachter »

declan wrote: post #22
saalweachter wrote: post #2

Note that the DC Court of Appeals is the one that the Filibuster Crisis was all about. According to the Wikipedia, it still(!) has three vacancies, and the Senate Republicans have spent the last ~N months preventing any of the Obama administrations nominees from being confirmed to the Court. These things matter.

The DC Circuit may have three vacancies (I'll trust your representation) but it also has the lightest workload per judge in the country: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230393690... "For the 12-months ending in September, the D.C. Circuit had 149 appeals filed per active judge. By comparison, the 11th Circuit had 778 appeals filed per active judge for the same period... The national average of appe…

That is entirely irrelevant. I say outright that the exact reason I want to see more judges appointed to this court is to pack it with judges who are more likely to produce decisions I agree with. You respond by accusing my of wanting to do exactly what I want to do. So?

As an aside, why do you say that the DC Circuit is "underworked" instead of saying that the 11th Circuit is "overworked"?

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#47

Post by pessimizer »

graedus wrote: post #18
gdubs wrote: post #13

My knowledge of Anti-Trust laws dates back to elementary school, but how is it legal for the companies that maintain the infrastructure to be in the content game as well, when other content providers can't compete on favorable pricing for bandwidth?

Because it's considered "vertical integration" and therefore not subject to anti-trust laws. Comcast merging with Time Warner would be considered horizontal; Comcast merging with NBCU was considered vertical and therefore allowed to go forward in January 2011. I'm currently reading Susan Crawford's book Captive Audience, which is a detailed history of this exact topic. Recommended. Here's a talk she gave at Harvard s…

Since when has vertical integration not been subject to antitrust laws?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#48

Post by graedus »

pessimizer wrote: post #47
graedus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's considered "vertical integration" and therefore not subject to anti-trust laws. Comcast merging with Time Warner would be considered horizontal; Comcast merging with NBCU was considered vertical and therefore allowed to go forward in January 2011. I'm currently reading Susan Crawford's book Captive Audience, which is a detailed history of this exact topic. Recommended. Here's a talk she gave at Harvard s…

Since when has vertical integration not been subject to antitrust laws? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic... .

Not sure, but since at least 2011 :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast_NBC_merger

(thanks for the link, interesting reading)

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#49

Post by Steko »

ilyanep wrote: post #43
mjmahone17 wrote: post #11

What the court is saying is that, if the FCC refuses to classify broadband providers as common carriers, then, because they neither receive the same protections as common carriers nor have the same responsibilities, they can't be regulated as if they were common carriers. The FCC could change their rules to treat broadband suppliers as common carriers. However, that's something that big-name broadband providers don't…

What are the other ramifications of being classified as a common carrier?

Congress specifically forbade the FCC from applying common carrier regulation to what the Telecommunications Act of 1996 calls "information services."

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#50

Post by dragonwriter »

esteb_li wrote: post #3
saalweachter wrote: post #2

Note that the DC Court of Appeals is the one that the Filibuster Crisis was all about. According to the Wikipedia, it still(!) has three vacancies, and the Senate Republicans have spent the last ~N months preventing any of the Obama administrations nominees from being confirmed to the Court. These things matter.

I couldn't agree more. There's absolutely no way this ruling can benefit the customers. The article mentionned that the FCC could rewrite its rule so to fit under the law, so it may very well be far from over.

The FCC could reclassify ISPs as telecommunication providers, which would remove the basis for the finding that the non-blocking and non-discrimination rules were (as common carrier rules, which cannot be applied to information service providers) outside their authority.

Of course, such a decision would itself be challenged, with ISPs arguing that what they do is not "telecommunications" as defined in the Telecommunications Act (I'm not saying this argument would be correct, but its not an uncontroversial position that the conflict between the order and the law can be remedied by simply reframing the order without a change in the law.)

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