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FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

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Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#131

Post by FireBeyond »

subtra3t wrote: post #33
falcolas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been many reports of ISPs overwriting ads and adding content to non-https content. Also bundled content on mobile providers not counting against caps, etc. Many also lie on speedtests, though I don't know if that counts.

Iirc they also limited data speed on netflix and other ott platforms, no?

Their big argument there was around asymmetry. "Netflix sends us a huge amount of data. That's not what peering was made for - it was meant to be more equal sharing of traffic. That's why we want to charge them."

So how about "We send BackBlaze, Dropbox, Acronis, etc., huge volumes of our customer's backup data, so we should be paying them"?

Hah. Not likely.

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#132

Post by FireBeyond »

swashboon wrote: post #40
edmundsauto wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they lie on speed tests? I thought that measured actual data throughput.

This was why Netflix setup Fast.com to use production servers and use data loads that mimic actual streaming video. Early on in streaming ISPs were throttling Netflix traffic when the household streaming demands started spiking (around 6 at night when every house in America would get home and turn on some streams). I believe there was a whole fight over peering agreements related to that... Speedtest.net was definite…

> Speedtest.net was definitely getting gamed and may still be or at least Comcast et al was prioritizing burst traffic

Hell, during the height of this Comcast partnered with Speedtest, and now hav their own Speedtest servers all over the country, so you don't even leave Comcast's network.

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#134

Post by thfuran »

ImJamal wrote: post #100
l33t7332273 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the other comment said, the internet is basically as interstate as a thing can get by design. The interstate commerce clause is extremely broadly interpreted. It can, for example, be used to prevent a farmer from growing grain on their own farm to feed their own cattle that reside on that very farm(Wickard v. Filburn)

I think Wickard vs Filburn is one of the worst decided cases out there. If I live in California and visit a website hosted in California there is no reason why there should be any interstate commerce involved.

What if all the traffic ends up routed through Nevada?

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#135

Post by InSteady »

joecool1029 wrote: post #126
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>50% of US GDP is in states that are almost certainly going to prevent traffic throttling: https://www.naruc.org/nrri/nrri-activities/net-neutrality-tr... It's probably not worth it to add in a whole bunch of BS just to try to make a bit more money in maybe Fl and Tx. Especially given the fact that it's not as straightforward as it seems - and legal consequences could easily outweigh any benefits. On top of that, I'd…

> Net neutrality is wildly popular with the public. In the tech bubble. Outside of the bubble you will be hard pressed to find people able to actually articulate what net neutrality is. And those people are easily swayed by partisan means: ('The democrats want more government regulation that's going to increase your internet and wireless bills') ISP's only have to claim 'your costs have gone up due to new government…

Average Joe and Jane consumers are quite familiar with data limits, more expensive access to highspeed data, throttled data based on arbitrary stuff, etc. People may not have heard of net neutrality, but that doesn't mean the basic concepts are over their head.

"AT&T could choose to throttle your streaming data when you don't use their partnered app to watch sports on your phone" cuts through the BS pretty directly.

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#136

Post by LightHugger »

pyuser583 wrote: post #11

Did any of the bad effects of not having net neutrality actually occur when it was gone? Did ISPs throttle competition? I haven’t seen any reports of this happening. I haven’t seen any studies showing this happening systematically. I’m woefully uninformed, so I really would like to hear more about this. What has been happening these past few years?

yes, they extorted netflix and other big providers into paying them or else they'd use the lack of net neutrality to basically delete their service. Which ends up meaning you pay more for streaming services like netflix and it's competitors.

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#137

Post by thfuran »

jpalawaga wrote: post #117
seanw444 wrote: post #86

Our laws are very similar to our medicine. We take a pill that causes a side-effect, which requires a pill to fix that side-effect but causes another side effect... so on. We start with state interference of the free market in a small way, and it mangles the fair game. And then we "need" laws to "protect" us from issues caused by state interference in the first place. So sick of it all.

Regulation is a response to bad behaviour, not the cause of it. We started with a free market. People acted poorly. In came regulation. Specifically: regulation that was not imposed on us as society, but of our own choosing. Not to say that regulation can't cause issues of it's own. But regulation (believe it or not) is there for a reason, even if imperfect. Actually, it's quite telling that you confused 'free market…

>Regulation is a response to bad behaviour, not the cause of it.

Regulation is a means to an end. Sometimes the goal is to curb some bad behavior. Sometimes the goal is to give the appearance of doing something (like looking tough on crime). Sometimes the goal is fundamentally corrupt, such as the bans of municipal fiber networks pushed through by incumbent ISPs. Sometimes the regulations even mostly achieve their goal without much in the way of unintended consequences. But it's certainly not as simple as regulations are always an effective response to bad behavior that do not themselves cause bad behavior.

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#138

Post by hn_acker »

cheald wrote: post #105

I'm still broadly convinced that the whole net neutrality outcry back in 2017 was due to a fundamental misunderstanding of how peering works and misplaced anger due to the peering dispute between Cogent and Comcast (and Verizon, and I'm sure plenty of others). None of the promised apocalypse materialized, because the marketing materials used to make the case for it were fundamentally wrong.

> None of the promised apocalypse materialized, because the marketing materials used to make the case for it were fundamentally wrong.

Keep in mind that states passed net neutrality laws [1], and large ISPs such as Comcast and Verizon tried to ban states from doing so [2]. Even so, the reclassification of broadband from Title II to Title I formally removed much of the FCC's authority to regulate ISPs at all [3]:

> A big part of the FCC’s plan involves rolling back the FCC’s tailor-made authority over broadband providers, then shoveling all remaining government oversight to an FTC ill-equipped to handle it.

> Why is that a problem? The FTC has no rule-making ability, and can only move to protect consumers after a violation has occurred. And that action can only occur if it’s painfully clear that an ISP engaged in “unfair and deceptive” behavior, something that’s easy for an ISP to dodge in the net neutrality era, where anti-competitive behavior is often buried under faux-technical jargon and claims that it was done only for the health and safety of the network.

Federal net neutrality rules were significant but nonetheless were a fraction of the broadband consumer protection debate. You are correct that an apocalypse didn't happen. Rather, the US already was mired in monopolization, fraud, and regulatory capture. These are problems net neutrality can provide only a bandage for. The FCC couldn't begin to help with the larger issues without restoring at least some of its Title II authority (regardless of whether the FCC would actually acknowledge the monopolization in the first place [4]).

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2022/01/28/courts-again-shoot-down-...

[2] https://www.techdirt.com/2017/11/06/comcast-urges-fcc-to-ban...

[3] https://www.vice.com/en/article/yw5d5g/net-neutrality-big-te...

[4] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/22/net-neutralitys-dead-tim...

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#139

Post by m463 »

pyuser583 wrote: post #11

Did any of the bad effects of not having net neutrality actually occur when it was gone? Did ISPs throttle competition? I haven’t seen any reports of this happening. I haven’t seen any studies showing this happening systematically. I’m woefully uninformed, so I really would like to hear more about this. What has been happening these past few years?

Directly, I think every ISP that allowed unlimited traffic for their own streaming media service while counting third party streaming services against a cap.

Re: FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote

#140

Post by mywittyname »

godelski wrote: post #106
SllX wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I’ve never understood is the argument that what California does regulating ISPs could actually affect the service plans in 49 other States. Think about it: these are service plans offered through cables that already exist, and that cross defined borders right? But what all an ISP has to do to offer different service plans in California, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona is to merely offer different terms to different p…

> What I’ve never understood is the argument that what California does regulating ISPs could actually affect the service plans in 49 other States. What I've never understood is the argument that what Europe does regarding privacy could actually affect the privacy of other countries. Sure, some websites detect your location and apply different rules to you but a lot end up just following GDPR and apply it universally…

I know for a fact there are tech companies that build out separate systems for EU and US data pipelines. It's not really a big deal to have a lawyer look over the data that's being collected and flag stuff as can be collected in Europe, and can be migrated to the USA for processing. Companies generally run EU-specific infrastructure anyway. GDPR is honestly one of the easier aspects of operating in Europe.
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