Net Neutrality repeal in USA

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**Galas**

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/technology/fcc-net-neutrality.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

The Federal Communications Commission released a plan on Tuesday to dismantle landmark regulations that ensure equal access to the internet, clearing the way for internet service companies to charge users more to see certain content and to curb access to some websites.

The proposal, made by the F.C.C. chairman, Ajit Pai, is a sweeping repeal of rules put in place by the Obama administration. The rules prohibit high-speed internet service providers, or I.S.P.s, from stopping or slowing down the delivery of websites. They also prevent the companies from charging customers extra fees for high-quality streaming and other services.

The announcement set off a fight over free speech and the control of the internet, pitting telecom titans like AT&T and Verizon against internet giants like Google and Amazon. The internet companies warned that rolling back the rules could make the telecom companies powerful gatekeepers to information and entertainment. The telecom companies say that the existing rules prevent them from offering customers a wider selection of services at higher and lower price points.

“Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet,” Mr. Pai said in a statement. “Instead, the F.C.C. would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them.”

Mr. Pai, a Republican who has pursued an aggressive deregulation agenda, was widely expected to have his plan approved during a meeting on Dec. 14. The two other Republicans on the commission generally vote with Mr. Pai, giving them a majority over the two Democrats.

This is sad news for americans dakkanauts. Is sad to see this obvious lobby-monkeys taking over the goverment and ruling to their own interests in detriment of the citizens. And if USA falls with this, I'm sure Europe will follow at some point.

I suppose that for some people Telecoms have their right to be free to offer whatever service they want... but being monopolys as they are, and with something as vital as Internet, I believe this kind of regulations are very neccesary. Is sad to see that even giants like Google and Amazon are powerless agaisn't the true titans that are the Telecom business like Verizon.

**MrMoustaffa**

"Just need to be upfront about it"

Which will be great when they all hold hands and enact horrible restrictions in unison so you don't have an alternative. I live out in the sticks and there's not a lot of choices, this means I'm at the whim of whatever company wants to push me around. If this is allowed to happen it will be bad for everyone save a few POS executives who already milk us for every penny as is.

Absolutely ridiculous, does anyone know a way to protest this or call in? From the sound of it this isn't a traditional situation where you can call your senator and complain. I mean I'm going to do it anyways, if we raise enough of a stink to our representatives we might be able to get congress to step in, but I'm not holding my breath.

**Galas**

https://www.battleforthenet.com/

This is the best I found. It explains it pretty good, the video of John Olliver is spot on.

**Ustrello**

Just wait til the restrict access or slow down porn. They will be burning a effigy of ajit pai every day

**sebster**

Elections have consequences.

**Orlanth**

Ustrello wrote:
Just wait til the restrict access or slow down porn. They will be burning a effigy of ajit pai every day

There is a political agenda first and a corporate second with this change. It may be the best way for the poltical establishment to curb the rise of the alt right and of progressives.
However bread and circuses, so most mainstream porn sites will not get pinched, entertainment won't either nor will gaming. If those are hit people will complain, but they will overlook lack of access to poltical content if distracted properly.

**Peregrine**

sebster wrote:
Elections have consequences.

It's just unfortunate that the consequences are also paid by those of us who saw them coming, and voted against them.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Orlanth wrote:
There is a political agenda first and a corporate second with this change. It may be the best way for the poltical establishment to curb the rise of the alt right and of progressives.
However bread and circuses, so most mainstream porn sites will not get pinched, entertainment won't either nor will gaming. If those are hit people will complain, but they will overlook lack of access to poltical content if distracted properly.

You've said this before, but it still makes no sense. The political elite don't care about access to political content or any particular movement, they have plenty of experience and skill at hijacking any populist movement that threatens to get them out of power. Even the greatest success of someone outside the political establishment, Trump becoming president, is turning out to be little more than a temporary break in power before the inevitable backlash returns establishment candidates to power. The political establishment doesn't need to resort to endlessly trying to chase censorship-by-inconvenience as the location of political content moves from platform to platform. There just isn't any meaningful benefit to them.

On the other hand the corporate benefit is extremely clear. ISPs get access to a massive revenue stream, and large corporations get the ability to buy priority service over their competition. And their paid-for representatives in the government have a strong incentive to do what their employers want. When you have that obvious a benefit for the people advocating for something there's really no reason to go looking for weird conspiracy theories as an alternative.

**sebster**

Orlanth wrote:
There is a political agenda first and a corporate second with this change. It may be the best way for the poltical establishment to curb the rise of the alt right and of progressives.
However bread and circuses, so most mainstream porn sites will not get pinched, entertainment won't either nor will gaming. If those are hit people will complain, but they will overlook lack of access to poltical content if distracted properly.

There is plentiful power to shut down any alt-right or... omg progressive group right now, providers can refuse to host them, social media sites can refuse to host them. That happens only rarely, in part because it's a hassle for companies to police so they provide few resources to police this, and also because they are quite rightly concerned about the impact of an excessively zealous policy on stifling debate.

There's nothing in this bill that will suddenly lead to new powers that would ramp up political talk coming from the fringes of society.

But what the bill does have is the power for providers to strike deals with various internet giants to control the speed their sites can be accessed. That's why Amazon and sites like that hate this - because if they want to have the best performing sites they will have to pay the internet providers.

The whole thing is a commercial rent seeking exercise.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Peregrine wrote:
It's just unfortunate that the consequences are also paid by those of us who saw them coming, and voted against them.

It sucks, no argument there.

**Pendix**

Am I right in thinking this could be really bad for small businesses operating primarily online?

Asking for a friend.

**Peregrine**

Pendix wrote:
Am I right in thinking this could be really bad for small businesses operating primarily online?

Asking for a friend.

It probably depends on what sort of business it is. If, for example, you're talking about an online retail store selling physical products for mail delivery, probably not. Outright blocking content from competitors is the kind of thing that gets new regulations put back in place after angry customers demand it, even if it is legal to do it. And bandwidth for an online retail store isn't much of a limiting factor. Taking 0.1s longer to load a primarily-text store page is not something that is going to change a customer's buying decisions. But if you're in a bandwidth-heavy market like streaming video, online software sales, online gaming, etc, then it's potentially catastrophic. As a small business you can't match the priority fees paid by your larger competition, and slow service with that kind of product will quickly eliminate most of your customers.

**sirlynchmob**

Pendix wrote:
Am I right in thinking this could be really bad for small businesses operating primarily online?

Asking for a friend.

Yep, It would allow timewarner who owns msnbc to block their users from going to fox news or any other site with competing information. The ISP will have the power to decide which start ups succeed or fail by granting higher speed to the sites they approve of, and either slowing down or blocking other sites all together.

**Peregrine**

sirlynchmob wrote:
Yep, It would allow timewarner who owns msnbc to block their users from going to fox news or any other site with competing information. The ISP will have the power to decide which start ups succeed or fail by granting higher speed to the sites they approve of, and either slowing down or blocking other sites all together.

Fox News vs. MSNBC is hardly a case involving small businesses. And blocking access to Fox News entirely means a lot of angry customers, a lot of lost customers, and a lot of people telling their elected officials to deal with the problem or get voted out of office.

**sirlynchmob**

Peregrine wrote:
sirlynchmob wrote:
Yep, It would allow timewarner who owns msnbc to block their users from going to fox news or any other site with competing information. The ISP will have the power to decide which start ups succeed or fail by granting higher speed to the sites they approve of, and either slowing down or blocking other sites all together.

Fox News vs. MSNBC is hardly a case involving small businesses. And blocking access to Fox News entirely means a lot of angry customers, a lot of lost customers, and a lot of people telling their elected officials to deal with the problem or get voted out of office.

Maybe a decade or two ago that would work, now the rally cry is "deregulate" and the powers that be just saying "oh look at those liberals trying to regulate your internet, vote for me, they must be stopped." and the R's fall in line and vote their party.

**Peregrine**

sirlynchmob wrote:
Maybe a decade or two ago that would work, now the rally cry is "deregulate" and the powers that be just saying "oh look at those liberals trying to regulate your internet, vote for me, they must be stopped." and the R's fall in line and vote their party.

I don't find that very plausible in a situation where conservatives are blocked from getting access to Fox News, "their" network. It's very hard to sell a plan for deregulation when the direct cause is a lack of regulations allowing the problem in question. The actual spin on it would be "oh look at those liberals censoring anything but their liberal SJW police state", and republicans who support the deregulation plan would be labeled traitors and face primary challenges from their own party.

**Ouze**

sebster wrote:
Elections have consequences.

Impossible, all the candidates are equally bad.

**sirlynchmob**

Peregrine wrote:
sirlynchmob wrote:
Maybe a decade or two ago that would work, now the rally cry is "deregulate" and the powers that be just saying "oh look at those liberals trying to regulate your internet, vote for me, they must be stopped." and the R's fall in line and vote their party.

I don't find that very plausible in a situation where conservatives are blocked from getting access to Fox News, "their" network. It's very hard to sell a plan for deregulation when the direct cause is a lack of regulations allowing the problem in question. The actual spin on it would be "oh look at those liberals censoring anything but their liberal SJW police state", and republicans who support the deregulation plan would be labeled traitors and face primary challenges from their own party.

no it wasn't a plausible situation, just highlighting the problem, it's hard to make a large organisation disappear, maybe just cut their speed a little bit, or in 1/2, or to the point streaming their site is impossible.

You have it backwards, republicans for net neutrality will be the traitors. As this will be trumps doing, the R's will be in full support of it, even if their providers make some sites they like disappear. They won't blame trump, nor the party that allowed it to happen, it will be the liberals fault.

**Peregrine**

sirlynchmob wrote:
maybe just cut their speed a little bit, or in 1/2, or to the point streaming their site is impossible

Which is exactly what I said in my first response to the original question on how much the change will hurt small businesses: you can't block content entirely, so the effect will be directly proportional to how much you depend on high bandwidth for your online presence.

Also, the success of the rule change depends on most customers not seeing meaningful changes in service. You can play favorites and charge Netflix extra money for priority service over Amazon, a cost that is passed on to the customer. You can do it to the point that streaming live is impossible, and you have to buffer your show before you start. But if the customer finds that their Amazon-exclusive TV shows aren't watchable at all then you have masses of unhappy customers to deal with and you lose your nice cash cow to milk. So you can't milk it too aggressively, especially with large businesses like Netflix/Fox News/etc that have large numbers of customers.

As this will be trumps doing, the R's will be in full support of it

This theory would seem to contradict the current political situation, where even members of Trump's own party are starting to express disapproval and distance themselves from him. His approval numbers are horrifyingly high for someone who has placed himself as the polar opposite of the left while simultaneously breaking every campaign promise he made to the right, but there are still large numbers of republicans/conservatives feeling buyer's remorse about Trump and those people are not going to mindlessly support his removal of net neutrality if it damages their enjoyment of the internet.

**Pendix**

Peregrine wrote:

It probably depends on what sort of business it is. If, for example, you're talking about an online retail store selling physical products for mail delivery, probably not. Outright blocking content from competitors is the kind of thing that gets new regulations put back in place after angry customers demand it, even if it is legal to do it. And bandwidth for an online retail store isn't much of a limiting factor. Taking 0.1s longer to load a primarily-text store page is not something that is going to change a customer's buying decisions. But if you're in a bandwidth-heavy market like streaming video, online software sales, online gaming, etc, then it's potentially catastrophic. As a small business you can't match the priority fees paid by your larger competition, and slow service with that kind of product will quickly eliminate most of your customers.

Thanks for the explanation!

So the expectation would be throttling bandwidth, rather than gating access? No scenario where your ISP would be saying; "So you didn't get the 'Wargmaing Add-on'; no Dakka Dakka for you." or "Nobody will be able to access your site through our ISP unless you, website owner, pay a nominal fee."

**Peregrine**

Pendix wrote:
So the expectation would be throttling bandwidth, rather than gating access? No scenario where your ISP would be saying; "So you didn't get the 'Wargmaing Add-on'; no Dakka Dakka for you." or "Nobody will be able to access your site through our ISP unless you, website owner, pay a nominal fee."

Legally they could gate access like that, but the resulting backlash would be immense and probably kill off their cash cow before they have much time to milk it.

**Mozzyfuzzy**

Peregrine wrote:
Pendix wrote:
So the expectation would be throttling bandwidth, rather than gating access? No scenario where your ISP would be saying; "So you didn't get the 'Wargmaing Add-on'; no Dakka Dakka for you." or "Nobody will be able to access your site through our ISP unless you, website owner, pay a nominal fee."

Legally they could gate access like that, but the resulting backlash would be immense and probably kill off their cash cow before they have much time to milk it.

I imagine that gating access would come later when they feel they can get away with it.

**cuda1179**

This seems incredibly political. US Political. I thought there was a ban on this subject?

**Pacific**

Yes but the effects will be global

(although I guess you could make the same argument about the US elections)

**Peregrine**

cuda1179 wrote:
This seems incredibly political. US Political. I thought there was a ban on this subject?

Perhaps, rather than trying to get this thread locked, you could discuss the topic and demonstrate why the ban is pointless and needs to disappear.

**Galas**

Mozzyfuzzy wrote:
Peregrine wrote:
Pendix wrote:
So the expectation would be throttling bandwidth, rather than gating access? No scenario where your ISP would be saying; "So you didn't get the 'Wargmaing Add-on'; no Dakka Dakka for you." or "Nobody will be able to access your site through our ISP unless you, website owner, pay a nominal fee."

Legally they could gate access like that, but the resulting backlash would be immense and probably kill off their cash cow before they have much time to milk it.

I imagine that gating access would come later when they feel they can get away with it.

Of course.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

Here you have an example of a Portuguese internet company offering "add-ons" to have access to specific apps on the internet.

If they destroy Net Neutrality in USA, this is your future guys. This is not a political thing. This will screw over everybody that isn't part of the Telecom lobbys. If you are part of those I suppose you should support this, but personally,

you.

John Thorne, senior vice president and deputy general counsel of Verizon, a broadband and telecommunications company, has argued that they will have no incentive to make large investments to develop advanced fibre-optic networks if they are prohibited from charging higher preferred access fees to companies that wish to take advantage of the expanded capabilities of such networks. Thorne and other ISPs have accused Google and Skype of freeloading or free riding for using a network of lines and cables the phone company spent billions of dollars to build

This, coming from companies that fuction as a monopoly and more like mafias than as a business, is total BS.

**daedalus**

cuda1179 wrote:
This seems incredibly political. US Political. I thought there was a ban on this subject?

If you think this doesn't affect anyone in the developed world, you're in for a surprise.

I'm sincerely unsure of what the recourse is. I suppose we need to gear up for another anti-SOPA style gak show. It'd be nice if google and wikipedia felt like helping out again.

**Easy E**

Welcome to the "Cable"-ization of the internet. It was fun while it lasted!

**daedalus**

Galas wrote:

Here you have an example of a Portuguese internet company offering "add-ons" to have access to specific apps on the internet.

Galas, do you know, from a technological standpoint, how they manage that? Do they block those things unless you 'pay' for them? What about services that aren't listed on the options? I'm thinking basic stuff like ssh or ftp or even just http? The weird thing is that some of those appear to be websites, i.e. a subset of traffic over http/https, and some appear to be services, like email, would I would think would filter entire ports. But yet I don't see anything indicating vpn, which would obviously be a gaping hole in their racket.

**Galas**

To be honest I'm pretty ignorant in the technological part of this, so no, I don't know how they do it. They can directly block specific ports, yeah, that I know. But I'm sure they'll find the way to do whatever they want at a technical level.

Blocking websites unless you pay for them is the most radical extreme of this. But theres many points before reaching that. From paying for "faster" access to certain websites, services or apps, from those websites having to pay a extra (Like Netflix needs to do) to have their streaming content delivered at a reasonable speed.

**KingCracker**

MrMoustaffa wrote:
"Just need to be upfront about it"

Which will be great when they all hold hands and enact horrible restrictions in unison so you don't have an alternative. I live out in the sticks and there's not a lot of choices, this means I'm at the whim of whatever company wants to push me around. If this is allowed to happen it will be bad for everyone save a few POS executives who already milk us for every penny as is.

Absolutely ridiculous, does anyone know a way to protest this or call in? From the sound of it this isn't a traditional situation where you can call your senator and complain. I mean I'm going to do it anyways, if we raise enough of a stink to our representatives we might be able to get congress to step in, but I'm not holding my breath.

Shoot I live near the city in a populated area and we really only have 2 options for cable. This sucks BAD

**WrentheFaceless**

This is a terrible non-political thing that will affect everyone that's not a giant telecom company negatively.