Net Neutrality is on the ropes

[gremcint]

http://www.latimes.com/business/hilt...#axzz2qQt8nA2W

"AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast will be able to deliver some sites and services more quickly and reliably than others for any reason," telecommunications lawyer Marvin Ammori (he's the man quoted above) observed even before the ruling came down. "Whim. Envy. Ignorance. Competition. Vengeance. Whatever. Or, no reason at all."

This is scary and could lead to serious repercussions later.

[mikoyan29]

I would like to know who the hell thinks this is a good idea? Would these be the same telecommunication companies that regularly hold certain cable networks hostage over petty issues? I can only imagine what they would do with the net. Given that the net came out of the Government, the Government should regulate it like they do the airwaves.

[Signmaker]

I wish they would quit calling it Net Neutrality, and called it what it is: ISP Neutrality. The internet is neutral by default, and ISPs do not control the internet. They control the access to their servers by their customers. Large cable ISPs are willing to throttle certain aspects of their services because there is no high speed competition between cable companies. If there were, overhead/underground lines would be laden with multiple cable lines, since they own and maintain those. The infrastructure itself prevents competition.

The FCC cannot regulate how the cable ISP throttles their service any more than they can dictate what channel packages a cable company can offer. In fact, what the ultimate outcome of this very well may be is buying internet packages based not only on connection speeds, but preferred high speed connections to specific sites. These will be advertised as "premium access" features and upsold, while the throttled down connection speeds to other sites will be pushed under the rug.

So the fix? Wait for long range WiFi tech to get up to speed. It would give room for competition in an area without the "new" ISP having to run their own lines, while still giving competitive speeds, and the added bonus of giving you internet connectivity everywhere, the same way your cell phone does.

Asking the FCC to safeguard ISP neutrality is like drowning in a pool and calling for your cat to save you. He's just gonna sit there, watch you drown, and then go pee on your couch and take a nap.

[s_stabeler]

it's irrelevant what you call it. it's a basic principle of the internet that all traffic is treated equally.

there is actually one thing that the ISPs seem to have forgotten, though. Copyright. The reason that ISPs aren't liable for copyright infringement done by their customers is because they are a "dumb pipe"- that is, they merely transfer the data given to them. If they start restricting certain types of data, they are no longer a dumb pipe, and therefore can be made liable for transferring copyrighted information. ( on the basis that they actually have control over what the customer sees. I bet that the first copyright lawsuit would change their minds pretty quick.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

I don't really think DARPA was primarily concerned with traffic priority. That's only something people got concerned with once the hardware could actually perform that function.

Net Neutrality is something that if people want, they're going to have to fight for laws to protect it specifically and MIGHT have to amend the constitution to prevent a conservative court from holding those laws invalid. We've been lucky that the hardware and software for a long time simply didn't exist to violate net neutrality but most of that technology is mature now. I'd prefer neutrality, but the problem with carriers is the economy of scale for cable, land line, and eventually WiFi will almost always create oligopolies. Unfortunately oligopolies will always maximize their profit by fitting their pricing and services to a curve rather than a single price point.

The big hardware makers have been selling this equipment for years like Cisco, Juniper, and Avaya. Funny thing is, if we prevent them from using it those companies basically will have stolen a huge amount of money from the providers. But whatcha gonna do...

[Signmaker]

it's irrelevant what you call it. it's a basic principle of the internet that all traffic is treated equally.

But the internet still treats all traffic equally, it's only the access you pay for to have a high speed connection to the net that would be restricted. You could establish your own ISP and nothing would be affected. But for the paying privelege of using the cable company's high speed connection, they would throttle the bandwidth on the connection between you and the net.

there is actually one thing that the ISPs seem to have forgotten, though. Copyright.

It'd never stick. They'd have the argument that they do not deny traffic to any site, simply limit the bandwidth. One of the first groups to get limited will be torrent sites, which will make the large media companies (who are often under the same corporate umbrella as the ISP) happy.

This crap is coming, the tech is here, and while the public is offended, the localalized monopolies the large cable companies hold prevent much from being done about it. No upstart wants to deal with the capital cost of running new cable lines in order to compete, and the tech to affordably compete with the speed of cable just isnt ready yet. And we cant just make a law saying private companies must offer all products in equal quantities.

[s_stabeler]

But the internet still treats all traffic equally, it's only the access you pay for to have a high speed connection to the net that would be restricted. You could establish your own ISP and nothing would be affected. But for the paying privelege of using the cable company's high speed connection, they would throttle the bandwidth on the connection between you and the net.

bullshit. Currently, it is an accepted principle that ( for example) if you get internet from your cable company, they cannot throttle Netflix.

oh, and about copyright- it's irrelevant what you do after monitoring the data. the main argument for ISPs not being liable for copyright is that it was too expensive for them to monitor the connections. If they are ALREADY monitoring the connection for certain material... I worked in a copyright enforcement place, and if you could throttle infringing websites into uselessness, then that would be considered a win by them.

and we actually already HAVE laws that cover Net neutrality, or have you forgotten anti-trust laws? throttling the competition into uselessness would be considered breaching anti-trust laws, I think.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

And yet they can and do throttle Torrent traffic. The fact that they can't screw with Netflix is also largely a technical issue. In essence they would have to sniff the traffic down to the HTTP layer to isolate the transfer and THEN throttle it. The expense of enterprise boxes that could do that to an entire internet's worth of data traffic would be prohibitively expensive. Add to that the immediate reaction (as you say) would be a lawsuit due to anti-trust. The risk/reward is out of whack. Netflix would sue for damage and probably win. If their income is negatively impacted because cable company X negatively impacts their customer, that's probably going to be a fairly cut and dry tort.

Neutrality is sort of a broad issue when it comes to what it means. I think wikipedia lists it as meaning everything (application, data source, etc.) which really isn't practicable. IP PHone traffic or a multicast video stream REQUIRES higher priority than web traffic. If vendors aren't allowed to execute that, services don't work. So when people argue about it, they're generally just talking about the tiered service model which means priority by source.

And that stuff is technically feasible now. People should probably be fluent in the debate and figure out what they actually find acceptable and what they don't. I don't have a problem with teired bandwidth for example, but I find content filtering and teiring problematic since it will just inevitably lead to black market tools. I find no problem in application prioritizing because I don't see why 911 service traffic or phone call need to sit behind someone's torrent server bank. That's just the reality of limited resources.

[Signmaker]

People should probably be fluent in the debate and figure out what they actually find acceptable and what they don't.

This gave me a good chuckle.

You raise a good point, and I do agree that while the Cable ISPs want to do tiered service, I dont think any of them want to be the first to jump into the pool. But if one does take the leap, and the first lawsuit goes through and has a case precident outcome, it will become the norm.

[gremcint]

I think this needs to be fought on terms of free speech more than copyright and competition. you limit access to social networks you are infringing on my free speech maybe?

[s_stabeler]

more or less, it's not strictly even neutrality by source. Basically, what people don't want is companies arbitrarily able to throttle parts of the internet at will. Allowing emergency calls a higher priority- fine. throttling Bittorrent- fine, if dubious. throttling all VoD ( Video On Demand) services, including your own- fine, albeit not ideal.Throttling Netfix, while not throttling your own service- not fine.

[mikoyan29]

more or less, it's not strictly even neutrality by source. Basically, what people don't want is companies arbitrarily able to throttle parts of the internet at will. Allowing emergency calls a higher priority- fine. throttling Bittorrent- fine, if dubious. throttling all VoD ( Video On Demand) services, including your own- fine, albeit not ideal.Throttling Netfix, while not throttling your own service- not fine.

And given all the recent bull that cable providers have been pulling with the channels that are not part of their empire (AMC with DirectTV I think), who is to say that they wont do that very thing?

[s_stabeler]

And given all the recent bull that cable providers have been pulling with the channels that are not part of their empire (AMC with DirectTV I think), who is to say that they wont do that very thing?

that's my point- there needs to be somebody enforcing it. Right now? there is nobody forcing it.

[Jetfire]

Yeah, up here someone's starting to fight back against Bell because they are letting their BellTV app count for less against data caps than Netflix and other On Demand apps.

I'm just thankful that (for now) Aliant's FibreOp is uncapped, and they use that as one of their selling features.

[EricKei]

I'm just gonna leave this here.