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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/01/14/d-c-circuit-court-strikes-down-net-neutrality-rules/ http://torrentfreak.com/court-throws-net-neutrality-overboard-but-comcast-wont-ban-torrents-140114/ Yesterday, Jan 14, 3 judges dismantled the open Internet by deciding that big companies should be able to determine what we see online. They struck down “Net Neutrality” the principle that no corporation or state authority can censor, slow down, block, or privilege certain content on the web. It's the basis for what has made the Internet a place for creativity, free speech, and innovation. Without Net Neutrality, the very startups that make the Internet a force of innovation will be throttled – unable to compete with incumbent businesses that can pay to provide their access faster than any startup could. As of yesterday’s ruling, no one can protect Internet users from ISPs that block or discriminate against websites, applications or services. Companies like Verizon will now be able to block or slow down any website, application or service they like. They may now charge a special service fee for popular sites or severely throttle the content of the popular sites legally if the fee is not paid. If you think youtube's been going to poo poo recently entirely on its own what do you think it will be like if the ISPs start intentionally throttling it further. Carriers can now charge content providers to make sure their content works well – something that privileges companies already dominating the market at the expense of the startups that have made the Internet great. Facebook or Google might be able to afford preferential treatment – but what about the startup that otherwise could replace them? It’s incredibly insidious, and it threatens to take away the level playing field that’s made the Internet such an incredible boon for society. Methanar fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 15, 2014 23:07
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This is a pretty dramatic reading of a ruling that was in effect "You used x authority to issue this rule. You cannot use x authority to issue that rule. If you were hypothetically to use authority y or z or to reclassify ISPs then those rules could be issued."
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Jan 15, 2014 23:11
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hobbesmaster posted:This is a pretty dramatic reading of a ruling This is a good summary of the entire internet in regards to this.
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Jan 15, 2014 23:28
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Page 8 of the SCOTUS thread has a fairly exhaustive discussion of the topic.
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Jan 16, 2014 01:40
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hobbesmaster posted:This is a pretty dramatic reading of a ruling that was in effect "You used x authority to issue this rule. You cannot use x authority to issue that rule. If you were hypothetically to use authority y or z or to reclassify ISPs then those rules could be issued." Reading the article, it seems to state that ISPs are controlled as "information services" and not "common carriers." This semantic is controlled by the FCC and is thus unlikely to be changed since they have been completely overrun by regulatory capture. They'll likely state simply that they can't change the classification of ISPs because of tradition. It is actually probably a more important ruling that your dismissal warrants.
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Jan 16, 2014 02:45
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Stereotype posted:Reading the article, it seems to state that ISPs are controlled as "information services" and not "common carriers." This semantic is controlled by the FCC and is thus unlikely to be changed since they have been completely overrun by regulatory capture. They'll likely state simply that they can't change the classification of ISPs because of tradition. It is actually probably a more important ruling that your dismissal warrants. You missed the part where that is one of several options they have to issue the same rules.
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Jan 16, 2014 02:53
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hobbesmaster posted:You missed the part where that is one of several options they have to issue the same rules. By "several options" you mean that they have two options: To reclassify ISPs as common carriers, or to argue that an "information service" company still falls under their regulatory oversight for common carriers since the two aren't mutually exclusive. If you are seeing more avenues that are not listed in the WaPo article you should link to it because I'm interested in reading about this.
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Jan 16, 2014 03:03
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Stereotype posted:By "several options" you mean that they have two options: To reclassify ISPs as common carriers, or to argue that an "information service" company still falls under their regulatory oversight for common carriers since the two aren't mutually exclusive. The supreme court thread has a lot of discussion on the subject starting here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3590854&pagenumber=8#post424435226
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Jan 16, 2014 03:26
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Is this the worst Supreme court ever?
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Feb 8, 2014 04:08
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Well there's at least a 50/50 chance this court would not uphold the Dred Scott decision if it came up, so we've had worse...
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Feb 8, 2014 04:21
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VitalSigns posted:Well there's at least a 50/50 chance this court would not uphold the Dred Scott decision if it came up, so we've had worse... That's a lovely prize to take home.
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Feb 8, 2014 04:25
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Wow, its kinda depressing that something like this gets no responses while we have an unironic Marxism circlejerk thread. Let me play devil's advocate: With services like Google Fiber, you could argue the FCC is ok in stoping net neutrality because its apparent that consumers aren't as stupid as we think they are and do vote with their wallets.
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Feb 13, 2014 13:49
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I live in the country. My choices are Comcast, sattelite internet that gets DSL-esque speeds in ideal conditions and poo poo latency, wireless DSL that only works if nothing is interfering with the tower and gets somewhere between 56k and DSL speeds when it works, and 56k dial up.
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Feb 13, 2014 14:03
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Judicial Activism!!  quote:Is this the worst Supreme court ever? Well there was one that upheld slavery. But this one is definately interested in ruining the lives of Americans all the same. That being said I don't think it's gotten to supreme court level yet.
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Feb 13, 2014 14:16
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OrganizedInsanity posted:Wow, its kinda depressing that something like this gets no responses while we have an unironic Marxism circlejerk thread. Let me play devil's advocate: With services like Google Fiber, you could argue the FCC is ok in stoping net neutrality because its apparent that consumers aren't as stupid as we think they are and do vote with their wallets. Also, here's the ruling http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/5DFE38F28E7CAC9185257C610074579E/$file/11-1355-1475317.pdf
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Feb 13, 2014 15:21
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Nelson Mandingo posted:Judicial Activism!! There was also the one that upheld the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent in WW2.
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Feb 13, 2014 16:02
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dorkasaurus_rex posted:There was also the one that upheld the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent in WW2. And the one that upheld compulsory sterilization of the unfit.
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Feb 13, 2014 16:49
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Basically you should consider it a good court if it doesn't violate at least three human rights with a single ruling.
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Feb 13, 2014 17:10
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A Fancy 400 lbs posted:I live in the country. My choices are Comcast, sattelite internet that gets DSL-esque speeds in ideal conditions and poo poo latency, wireless DSL that only works if nothing is interfering with the tower and gets somewhere between 56k and DSL speeds when it works, and 56k dial up. And now it looks like just about everyone is going to get Comcast shoved down their throat if the FTC or FCC don't kill this merger. I have mixed feelings about the significance of net neutrality dying, because in an even weakly competitive market it doesn't seem likely that providers are just going to start shafting consumers for fun. But if we're about to see even the weak competition engendered by consumers talking to each other and comparing notes about what crappy poo poo their local company does die because of mergers then I'm going to be leaning more and more towards it being a horrible thing.
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Feb 14, 2014 01:44
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I have Cablevision. But my choices for broadband are pretty much Cablevision and Cablevision. FIOS for some reason isn't available in my part of the city, my building has banned satellites, and DSL is kind of lovely at this point. To say that competition is weak seems like an understatement.
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Feb 15, 2014 17:48
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About 500,000 households, or 0.4% of Americans, have cable overbuild accessible to them. That is, a second cable system that was built and installed in the same area another cable company was already operated. This isn't surprising really, since even though many municipalities already signed exclusivity agreements, it's still expensive as hell to build duplicate infrastructure for cable. Here are the service areas of the top 10 cable companies, as of 2011:  The white area represents either no cable service at all (this is the case for most of the least densely populated areas) or service by a company smaller than the big 10. Now the interesting thing to note here is that a full merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable would first not reduce any choice - because they have not held competing cable systems at any territory since back in the early 2000s - mostly due to arranged buyouts and transfers of systems between the two companies, certain predecessor companies, and other independent providers. It would also only have ~36% of the cable internet and TV markets, and the initial plan involves selling off a few million customers from both to other systems which would shrink that slightly. And Time Warner Cable as an ISP has pulled plenty of bullshit operating on its own. Stuff like being hostile/slow to allow sites like Netflix to place edge caching stuff in their service centers while Comcast and other ISPs have been more than happy to for the combination of mild revenue from allowing the stuff in, as well as reduced traffic from outside their owned networl to customers because major sites have servers within the network. So really, "everyone's going to get Comcast shoved down their throats"? No way. People who already have TWC would, but TWC is currently providing among the poorest service of a cable provider while Comcast is among the best, according to FCC data: http://www.fcc.gov/measuring-broadband-america/2013/February Also keep in mind that Time Warner Cable's been trying to get someone to buy them in whole or in part recently, and the only other serious suitor was Charter, current 4th largest cable network in the country but has also been performing about the same as Comcast, which is why it'd be able to afford to buyout TWC - such a transaction would result in combined Charter-TWC being a good 20%-40% larger than Comcast is now depending on how you measure. Edit: As an aside I ask you all to consider the situation of the phone network in the US immediately post-AT&T "breakup". Many people view it as creating 7 competing Baby Bells, and the eventually merger of most of them with others as "reducing competition". But the Baby Bells each had solidly defined non-overlapping territories, and did not actually compete with each other in 99% of their business. And of course the AT&T long distance network pre-split remained almost entirely in the hands of the remaining "AT&T" company after the big split for local phone service!  original split split as of about 2009 - Qwest is now CenturyLink, most of the Connecticut territory was sold from AT&T to Verizon, and Frontier now is the main operating company in West Virginia due to a sale.Both of these maps do gloss over the fact that a lot of rural areas and some urban areas had and have the actual operating company different fromt he overall statewide, like how Verizon has all of the former GTE (a non-old-AT&T provider) territory in places like California, or how Frontier operates a lot the telephone service in rural areas within Centurylink, AT&T and Verizon territories. It's a LOT like cable territory, if cable territories had been more contiguous and larger from the start! ToastyPotato posted:I have Cablevision. But my choices for broadband are pretty much Cablevision and Cablevision. FIOS for some reason isn't available in my part of the city, my building has banned satellites, and DSL is kind of lovely at this point. To say that competition is weak seems like an understatement. It is only legal for your building to ban satellite dishes or standard OTA antennas if any of these conditions are met: 1) The dish is over a meter in size (DirecTV and Dish offer dishes under this size for their modern satellite systems) 2) The building is covered by being a registered historic place and the placement of satellite or normal antennas would detract from that historic character 3) The antenna would reach higher than 12 feet off the roof 4) The building has a full TV antenna on the roof and wiring into each unit that would allow you to receive all or most local over the air channels. Anything else, rules deriving from the Telecommunications Act of 1996 mean they can't disallow you from mounting satellite dishes or standard TV antennas, and this includes allowing them to be placed on the roof if placing them out a window or on a balcony would not allow the proper line of sight to orbiting satellites or proper reception of local market TV stations. Call 888-225-5322 and the FCC can help you force the owners to allow you to get a dish or antenna up. (Of course satellite internet is in no way competition for broadband, just saying your building's owners are lying when they say you can't have satellite and if they ever prevented you from doing it they broke the law! Even if the cable tv/internet was included in your rent, they're still obligated to allow you to have satellite or regular antennas) Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Feb 15, 2014 |
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Feb 15, 2014 18:39
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Qublai Qhan posted:it doesn't seem likely that providers are just going to start shafting consumers for fun.
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Feb 16, 2014 05:55
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FilthyImp posted:Well TWC started charging folks for the cable modems they need to connect to the service like a year ago. Thats a fine start. Time Warner Cable has charged modem rents by default since the time it was primary-branded as "Roadrunner". In fact, that's pretty much the most common way cable modems are paid for?
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Feb 16, 2014 06:25
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Install Windows posted:Time Warner Cable has charged modem rents by default since the time it was primary-branded as "Roadrunner". In fact, that's pretty much the most common way cable modems are paid for? They sell them at Target, so no?
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Feb 16, 2014 06:28
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The Entire Universe posted:They sell them at Target, so no? That's not the default way to get cable modems. Your average user gets a modem when they get the service, and pays rent on the modem that was installed. Just like most people don't go out and outright buy their digital cable box.
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Feb 16, 2014 06:36
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Sounds to me like America should get on the local loop unbundling bus.
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Feb 16, 2014 16:25
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The problem isn't just that comcast will have a large portion of the cable network in the United states, the problem is that Comcast is also a content distributor through its NBC Networks and it's various online CDNs. You combine that with the amount of customers they have and then people outside of that network will be disadvantaged.
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Feb 16, 2014 17:17
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rscott posted:The problem isn't just that comcast will have a large portion of the cable network in the United states, the problem is that Comcast is also a content distributor through its NBC Networks and it's various online CDNs. You combine that with the amount of customers they have and then people outside of that network will be disadvantaged. Do you think they're going to stop showing MSNBC unless it's on Comcast or something?
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Feb 16, 2014 17:19
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No they'll just charge more for it, the laws that say you have to offer the same price to all the cable networks won't matter because it's just moving money from one account to another in the parent company whereas Satellite and other cable providers will have to pay more.
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Feb 16, 2014 17:22
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Forums Terrorist posted:Sounds to me like America should get on the local loop unbundling bus. The local loop has been explicitly unbundled since the Telecommunications Act of 1996. rscott posted:The problem isn't just that comcast will have a large portion of the cable network in the United states, the problem is that Comcast is also a content distributor through its NBC Networks and it's various online CDNs. You combine that with the amount of customers they have and then people outside of that network will be disadvantaged. Comcast isn't going to risk losing money on the other 70%+ of US TV households (here including people who use satellite, over the air, or online tv as well as well as cable) by not letting their owned networks show up or impede their sales. If you ain't in a Comcast or Time Warner Cable area now, they can't get you to switch! rscott posted:No they'll just charge more for it, the laws that say you have to offer the same price to all the cable networks won't matter because it's just moving money from one account to another in the parent company whereas Satellite and other cable providers will have to pay more. Prove it, bud.
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Feb 16, 2014 17:27
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Hey, just like I predicted in the other thread, the FCC realized that it was the actual winner of the DC Circuit net neutrality decision and will be reinstituting the rules the Court struck down with slightly different justifications that the Court suggested in their opinion. Three judges struck down some rules, but they upheld net neutrality as a concept and said the FCC 100% does have the ability to implement it.
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Feb 19, 2014 20:44
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Kalman posted:Hey, just like I predicted in the other thread, the FCC realized that it was the actual winner of the DC Circuit net neutrality decision and will be reinstituting the rules the Court struck down with slightly different justifications that the Court suggested in their opinion. There is still hope in the world. Kind of.
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Feb 19, 2014 20:54
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Install Windows posted:That's not the default way to get cable modems. Your average user gets a modem when they get the service, and pays rent on the modem that was installed. Just like most people don't go out and outright buy their digital cable box. Both carriers in my area (Cox Cable and Frustration, Centurylink Telegraph and Latency) explicitly offer a choice between purchase or rental arrangement, as well as listing retailers. You're right about it being the default for now, and the modems aren't cheap (>$100 upfront, less from third party retail) but that's changing. I don't know anyone who hasn't bought a modem from a store in the past couple years because they're aware they can get something better than that shitbox surfboard/DSL POS from Target/Best Buy/NFM, etc. Comcast hasn't shown up yet, so at least there's that.
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Feb 19, 2014 21:50
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The Entire Universe posted:Both carriers in my area (Cox Cable and Frustration, Centurylink Telegraph and Latency) explicitly offer a choice between purchase or rental arrangement, as well as listing retailers. You're right about it being the default for now, and the modems aren't cheap (>$100 upfront, less from third party retail) but that's changing. I don't know anyone who hasn't bought a modem from a store in the past couple years because they're aware they can get something better than that shitbox surfboard/DSL POS from Target/Best Buy/NFM, etc. Comcast hasn't shown up yet, so at least there's that. Well it's weird that Cox and CenturyLink are both still dealing out super crappy modems as their standard device, but most carriers provide something perfectly fine, and often literally the same as what would be on local store shelves. Not to mention everyone who's already had broadband installed for years and wouldn't see a reason to buy their own modem so long as it still works.
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Feb 20, 2014 02:48
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I've had to watch the Olympics on pirated streams because NBC won't stream them on non-Comcast internet for free like the rest of the civilized world. I'm surprised more people aren't complaining about it...
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Feb 20, 2014 03:03
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Install Windows posted:It is only legal for your building to ban satellite dishes or standard OTA antennas if any of these conditions are met: That has absolutely nothing to do with how it is handled in practice unfortunately.
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Feb 20, 2014 03:13
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BlueBlazer posted:I've had to watch the Olympics on pirated streams because NBC won't stream them on non-Comcast internet for free like the rest of the civilized world. I'm surprised more people aren't complaining about it... Sure they will, as long as you subscribe to a cable provider they support (which is a lot more than just Comcast). The reason other countries do free online streaming is because, unlike the US, their respective government-sponsored (and therefore prepaid by taxes) broadcasting organizations bought Olympic rights.
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Feb 20, 2014 03:25
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Silver Nitrate posted:That has absolutely nothing to do with how it is handled in practice unfortunately. If they gently caress with you the FCC will sue them for free, and if they retaliate by eviction or other means it's a criminal offense.
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Feb 20, 2014 03:50
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Looks like we still have plenty to worry about. Comcast and Netflix just struck a deal with Comcast where they will pay Comcast to ensure that their content is delivered to subscribers without error. Get ready for Netflix's rates to go up.
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Feb 25, 2014 05:00
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Aren't they basically paying for Comcast to host Netflix's content to limit transmission times? The real problem here seems to be the lack of competition on the consumer side. Comcast has no incentive to play nice with Netflix, even though it'd be better for consumers, because there's no alternative.
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Feb 25, 2014 05:04
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