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FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

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Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#81

Post by kyrra »

lmg643 wrote: post #50
paulhauggis wrote: post #2

What scares me is that there are 700 regulations (that we haven't even seen) that got passed. I wouldn't sign a contract without reading it (and having the person on the other side telling me all of the reasons why I should), and neither should you. But apparently, the general population (and many here) will. I watched the entire live broadcast and the pros played only on emotion (safety, helping out the disadvantage…

Tom Wheeler was a career lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries. I assume those firms are getting what they want, sort of like how Obamacare is good for insurance companies (they are only "allowed" to sell expensive plans, with government subsidies for those who can't afford them). I liked this stat from Wheeler's bio: "Wheeler was inducted into the Wireless Hall of Fame in 2003, and in 2009, as a result of h…

He was a lobbyist for the cable industry from 1976 to 1984. I don't totally know what the industry was like back then, but from what I understand it's completely different then what we see today. Back then it was a large number of smaller providers that could easily be pushed around by larger networks. There was no massive comcast, timewarner or what have you.

I haven't read up on his time at the CTIA, but that was 1992 to 2004. Again during a time of a lot of smaller companies in the cellular industry. Remember when roaming was down right expensive or didn't even work? I think that was changed while he was part of CTIA. The wireless industry grew dramatically in that time.

What is the bad thing about him being a lobbyist for these groups? He's someone that has been part of the communication infrastructure at the political end since 1976. This means he probably has a very good idea of how his actions will impact companies. This seems like it may be a good thing?

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#82

Post by cheald »

mackal wrote: post #55
cheald wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they didn't. Netflix had plenty of options for transit to Comcast - they didn't have to use Cogent. But it would have cost them a lot more. Cogent is famous for both cut-rate transit and peering disputes with last-mile providers. The fact that they bought from Comcast rather than someone like Level3 or XO should tell you that they rate they got from Comcast was better than what they'd have gotten from another tra…

Netflix does use Level 3. At least for their connections to Verizon FiOS customers. Who also observe shit performance.

The Verizon/Level3 Netflix performance issue is also the consequence of a peering dispute between Level3 and Verizon, by admission of both Verizon and Level3 - not a consequence of Verizon specifically throttling Netflix traffic.

It's very important that the distinction be made between saturated interlinks and throttling of specific origins; many people seem to think that it's the latter that's been done here, when the issue is consistently interlink capacity disputes between last-mile ISPs and T1 providers.

To put it another way, unless these new rules require that ISPs hook up as much interlink as their T1 peers ask for, these rules won't fix shitty Netflix performance on last-mile networks who are engaged in peering disputes with Netflix's transit providers.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#83

Post by wtallis »

Zancarius wrote: post #10
paulhauggis wrote: post #2

What scares me is that there are 700 regulations (that we haven't even seen) that got passed. I wouldn't sign a contract without reading it (and having the person on the other side telling me all of the reasons why I should), and neither should you. But apparently, the general population (and many here) will. I watched the entire live broadcast and the pros played only on emotion (safety, helping out the disadvantage…

Funny how something intended to prevent ISPs from throttling content turned into a debate about helping out the disadvantaged, etc. It worries me that issues like this are co-opted to turn them into a one-size-fits-all batch of regulations sidelining their original intent. On the other hand, it's my understanding that the FCC will enter a period of public comments after voting on the rules but prior to enacting them.…

I can imagine a lot of ways the regulations might have been screwed up and subverted. "One size fits all" doesn't apply to any of them. In fact, it sounds to me like a good thing; we don't want to start down the road of carving out exemptions and exceptions for non-neutral behavior that should be treated as completely intolerable.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#84

Post by ForHackernews »

[deleted] wrote: post #46
ForHackernews wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regulating the internet like a utility is quite possibly the worst thing you can imagine, and now its come to reality. Why? My electricity and water work a hell of a lot better than my cable internet.

[deleted]

In many states, power-production has been decoupled from power-delivery. For example, in Illinois[0], customers can choose which company to buy their power from but maintaining the lines and delivering that power is still the responsibility of Commonwealth Edison, the old monopoly utility. This seems like a reasonable compromise to me, and it's not that dissimilar from Comcast delivering my packets, while I choose to buy my content from Netflix or Hulu or Amazon.

[0] http://www.pluginillinois.org/default.aspx

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#85

Post by deelowe »

api wrote: post #7
paulhauggis wrote: post #2

What scares me is that there are 700 regulations (that we haven't even seen) that got passed. I wouldn't sign a contract without reading it (and having the person on the other side telling me all of the reasons why I should), and neither should you. But apparently, the general population (and many here) will. I watched the entire live broadcast and the pros played only on emotion (safety, helping out the disadvantage…

Almost nobody in Washington reads anything. They just rubber stamp stuff written for them by bureaucrats, think tanks, and lobbyists. Question is who wrote this stuff: telecoms, Google, the NSA, ???

Just because you don't agree with the content doesn't they don't read it. :-) I'm sure the people that matter do read it, but they aren't concerned with the general public. Their only mission is to keep the populous naive while they do the bidding of their superiors (powerful leaders, lobbyists, corporations, etc...)

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#86

Post by dragonwriter »

unprepare wrote: post #15
paulhauggis wrote: post #2

What scares me is that there are 700 regulations (that we haven't even seen) that got passed. I wouldn't sign a contract without reading it (and having the person on the other side telling me all of the reasons why I should), and neither should you. But apparently, the general population (and many here) will. I watched the entire live broadcast and the pros played only on emotion (safety, helping out the disadvantage…

The grass is always greener. Seriously though, I think there was a lot of hype built up around net neutrality(for good reason) and it ended up clouding the discussion. Quickly it became a dichotomy, you must be either for Title II and whatever the FCC decides that entails, or you must be against any change to the status quo. Now that we are passed that dichotomy, we are faced with the reality that we have little cont…

> but someone rather late in the process pointed out to me that the FCC loves to censor things like television

I think you mistake "is mandated by Congress" for "loves".

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#87

Post by jes »

ForHackernews wrote: post #24
paulhauggis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to this, Chairman Wheeler refused to testify before congress about Net Neutrality. I would just like more transparency. With all of the Snowden leaks, why aren't we demanding transparency? Do we really just want to give our rights away like this?

Honestly, I don't blame him. We have a GOP-controlled Congress, so testifying would just be an hours-long exercise in getting yelled at by old people who don't understand technology or believe in science, but love an opportunity for political grandstanding against an Obama-appointee.

Your comment would have been better, in my view, without the ad-hominem attack on older people. Especially if you wish to advocate for a pro-science, reason and evidence approach to argumentation.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#88

Post by exelius »

Zancarius wrote: post #10
paulhauggis wrote: post #2

What scares me is that there are 700 regulations (that we haven't even seen) that got passed. I wouldn't sign a contract without reading it (and having the person on the other side telling me all of the reasons why I should), and neither should you. But apparently, the general population (and many here) will. I watched the entire live broadcast and the pros played only on emotion (safety, helping out the disadvantage…

Funny how something intended to prevent ISPs from throttling content turned into a debate about helping out the disadvantaged, etc. It worries me that issues like this are co-opted to turn them into a one-size-fits-all batch of regulations sidelining their original intent. On the other hand, it's my understanding that the FCC will enter a period of public comments after voting on the rules but prior to enacting them.…

Except the ISPs were never actually throttling content (well, other than BitTorrent, which the FCC promptly told them to stop doing), and the title II regulations passed today would have had no impact on the entire Netflix vs. Comcast/Verizon dispute. That boiled down to a dispute over settlement-free peering contracts, which the FCC does now have some oversight, though based on past comments I doubt their decisions would go the way most people would hope.

One positive about this is that it will give the FCC some oversight over the pricing of interconnect deals. But interconnect deals will still happen, and they won't be free - these rule changes effectively codified them into law. So Netflix will still have to pay Comcast/Verizon to send lots of traffic to their users, only the FCC now has the ability to regulate the pricing terms of such deals.

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#89

Post by [deleted] »

paulhauggis wrote: post #2

What scares me is that there are 700 regulations (that we haven't even seen) that got passed. I wouldn't sign a contract without reading it (and having the person on the other side telling me all of the reasons why I should), and neither should you. But apparently, the general population (and many here) will. I watched the entire live broadcast and the pros played only on emotion (safety, helping out the disadvantage…

[deleted]

Re: FCC Passes Strict Net Neutrality Regulations on 3-2 Vote

#90

Post by ebbv »

supergeek133 wrote: post #64
ebbv wrote: post #52

There's a lot of echoing of telco FUD in here. Let's get some things straight: - The FCC is unelected, but so is the EPA, FBI, CIA, DOD, DOJ, etc. We can't elect everybody who works in government. That wouldn't work. - This does not mean the FCC is uncontrollable or unanswerable for what it does. It answers to both the executive and legislative branches of government, and of course anything it does can be subject to…

I think many of us here call it a generally good move, we just wanted to see everything that was proposed before it was passed. Not that we could do anything about it.

We'll see it all soon (as in the next couple weeks) and if there's something awful in there we can start calling for revision.
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