[us current affairs] FCC commissioner files to revert net neutrality

I might be making a terrible mistake. Current afairs, ala politics. No name calling. Express your opinion, explain what your reasoning is, provide some kind of amplifying source. Disagree with anyone you want to, just no argument please or I'll find a way to get the stick myself.

Qualify your claims.

-----

If you're seeing notices crop up all over the place but you're unsure what all the hubbub's about: the FCC voted to implement docket 17-108, titled "Restoring Internet Freedom". You can find the text of that document here. 17-108 would revoke the FCC's ability to regulate Net Neutrality. Right now the docket is subject to public comment before it goes to a house hearing.

Regardless of your political alignment, you will want to understand exactly what this change could mean. I'm certainly biased but I tried not to get too dramatic here, and just provide some history & facts. My slant will certainly come through, I'm only human. I won't mind if you decide to think differently from me.

In 2015, the Net Neutrality Rule established a set of regulations under FCC Title II obligating the FCC to regulate the way large ISPs manage their Quality of Service policies. The purpose was simple: because major ISPs are largely without any competition, certain antitrust concerns arise. It might be in a provider's financial interest to, say, provide higher quality of service to resources hosted within its own network, than to external transfers. It might also be in a provider's financial interest to, say, provide higher quality of service to file transfers that originated within their own networks, and limit service to transfers "wheeling" across their equipment.

Now, prior to the 2015 Rule, such allegations were certainly widespread, though no single major service provider ever went to trial on the matter. The worst of it are rumors from small internet companies forced out of business by AT&T ca. 2000-2015 - these mostly didn't go out of business because they couldn't gather customers, but instead because they couldn't purchase good enough fiber offerings to serve their customers reliably. AT&T faced no such difficulties as they controlled the biggest fiber backbones in the west.

Revoking the 2015 net neutrality rule would allow your ISP, for instance Cox Communications, to restrict the amount of data flowing between their network and Netflix. This is a plausible (if not entirely likely) example - some usage patterns, certain types of users, are a flat loss for internet providers. What would stop them from doing such a thing? Their own moral compass?

In the docket, the FCC explains why they believe title II regulation is a poor fit for internet service providers. The author wishes to provide new legal classifications to internet services, so that more appropriate regulations may be imposed. And yet, the act completely neglects to re-implement net neutrality regulation and oversight for these newly-classified entities.

You can find a few instances of Ajit Pai (chairman) talking about this issue. He'll claim that title II regulation was just unnecessary, born from misguided fear. As explained in the docket:

"

64. Forbearance. If we adopt our lead proposal to remove the Title II reclassification of
broadband Internet access service, what effect does that action have on the provisions of the Act from
which the Commission forbore in the Title II Order? We believe that restoring the classification status of broadband Internet access service to an information service will render any additional forbearance moot in most cases. We seek comment on this analysis. At the same time, we seek comment on whether, with respect to broadband Internet access service, the Commission should maintain and extend forbearance to even more provisions of Title II as a way of further ensuring that our decision in this proceeding will prove to reduce regulatory burdens.

What the heck are they saying? This paragraph is talking about regulations from Net Neutrality that are purposely left behind; why their new act chooses not to carry over net neutrality regulation.

What this paragraph says is that corporations only had incentive to misbehave because financially cumbersome regulations restricted competition. Next, the author claims that by eliminating these regulations we not only don't create an opportunity for consumers to be manipulated. Instead, he suggests that we're providing more incentive for fair behavior by encouraging competition, in the form of investments into new infrastructure.

Who do you trust?

...

Now, if you go looking for videos and news about this subject, you're going to find far-right content and far-left content. Nothing explaining what's really going on.

I've tried to pick the least spun video, recorded some 4 months ago; simply a reporter asking chairman Pai direct questions that he has to answer on-the-spot. Some of the details are still a little over my head, but give it a watch and see if you believe what he's saying. Bloomberg interview with Ajit Pai, FCC Chairman

What he's saying is that ISPs certainly weren't screwing over their home consumers prior to 2015, and that might truly be the case. That the neutrality regulations deterred infrastructure investments from new tech companies.

But, the first count is almost certainly misdirection: of course ISPs didn't manipulate home consumers; rather, they used QoS policy as a means to wrestle for power with one another. Home consumers didn't see the battles directly, but in the end they had to live with the results.

---

I invite further discussion from people with better understanding than I have. My limited understanding involves a rather quick read of the document, and watching some video footage of Michael O'Reilly trying to reassure the public that this is in their best interest.

If you want to read the docket, please look here.
If you want to comment on the proceedings, first be a registered US voter, and then comment here. Unfortunately, comments on official proceedings are public record, and they'll ask for your address & email address. Certainly use your low-security email address.

Something this important shouldn't be left to agency "rules" which could change anytime the agency wished to do so. We need carefully considered legislation to protect the freedom to disburse and the freedom to receive information and content from the internet.

https://netneutrality.internetassociation.org/action/

They are being sarcastic ? It's basically the exact same way ISP offering about their services. (flashy images and the link to sign)

You all can blame bitcoin ;)

I think the only remedy here — which I haven't gotten around to — is direct analysis of the actual regulations. One big mistake is to assume that something titled by politicians as the Clean Water Act truly results in clean water, or that an Affordable Health Care Act actually ensures affordable health care; in the same way, it is a mistake to assume the body of regulation marketed to the public as Net Neutrality actually makes ISPs neutral.

Again, I haven't read yet, so I have little comment. Just pointing out that one should not allow oneself to be easily spun by the spin doctors.

"

DalaiLama wrote:

Something this important shouldn't be left to agency "rules" which could change anytime the agency wished to do so.

Federal regulations like this have to go in front of a house subcommittee. But you are right in that it doesn't require as much legislative involvement. That's what the agency is for.

It is indeed a little bit questionable. FERC has always upheld the public interest (power and water regulations). The FCC is beginning to look a little more dubious.

"

finisterre wrote:

https://netneutrality.internetassociation.org/action/

They are being sarcastic ? It's basically the exact same way ISP offering about their services. (flashy images and the link to sign)

If you want to sign some kind of petition, submit a comment on the docket at the FCC's website that I linked to. Anything else you find is probably clickbait.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

I think the only remedy here — which I haven't gotten around to — is direct analysis of the actual regulations. One big mistake is to assume that something titled by politicians as the Clean Water Act truly results in clean water, or that an Affordable Health Care Act actually ensures affordable health care; in the same way, it is a mistake to assume the body of regulation marketed to the public as Net Neutrality actually makes ISPs neutral.

Again, I haven't read yet, so I have little comment. Just pointing out that one should not allow oneself to be easily spun by the spin doctors.

I agree. There's a monster in the closet here, and I don't know if anyone aside from Cox and AT&T execs truly know whether that monster will come out.

Should the "Restoring Internet Freedom Act" be retitled the "Shitty Internet Service Act" ? Because that's the outcome for you as a home consumer IF companies begin to wrestle with one another behind the scenes. Your internet service could just begin to feel shitty.

If you couldn't tell, I don't trust big corporations in the US, and that came from rising to management in a fortune 500 company. They don't make good decisions from a long point of view. U.S. corporations will do absolutely insane things just to drive their margins up by a point on the next QBR. That's why I distrust any politician asking me to give corporations that face very little competition some benefit of the doubt.

meh...

nothing I can do about it...

"

k1rage wrote:

meh...

nothing I can do about it...

That's absolutely not true.

The first thing you can do about it is read it and understand it.

The second thing you can do about it is write your congressperson.

"

Zakaluka wrote:

Should the "Restoring Internet Freedom Act" be retitled the "Shitty Internet Service Act" ? Because that's the outcome for you as a home consumer IF companies begin to wrestle with one another behind the scenes. Your internet service could just begin to feel shitty.

If you couldn't tell, I don't trust big corporations in the US, and that came from rising to management in a fortune 500 company. They don't make good decisions from a long point of view. U.S. corporations will do absolutely insane things just to drive their margins up by a point on the next QBR. That's why I distrust any politician asking me to give corporations that face very little competition some benefit of the doubt.

On the one hand, you complain about how little competition these corporations face; on the other hand, you worry about what will happen if companies begin wrestling with each other. I infer that you're supportive of relatively small businesses here, and in the hypothetical case that a megacorporation is posed to unfairly smash an innovative, superior-service startup and is only held back by a regulatory leash, I could see why you might want to postpone a fight. However, to delay it indefinitely seems wrong to me — the rules of the fight should be crafted such that the competition is for who can best serve customers, then let's get ready to rumble. Considering you've been silent about why exactly it is that small innovators cannot complete and what unfair advantages such Fortune 500s leverage over their opposition, I find your unqualified acceptance of a noncompetitive market strange.

Let me be clear, the power struggles I'm talking about aren't what you'd consider healthy marketplace competition.

I'm worried about a few things. You're mostly right that I'm supportive of a diverse marketplace, but I don't think this act is actually designed to encourage new infrastructure startups. I think it's just generally designed to lower cost of operation for existing companies.

A few possibilities:

1) reducing regulation might not actually encourage small businesses to get into the market place. It'll give big corporations more power to squash small businesses like they did in the 2000-2010 era (A business owner I knew at the time fought through those shenanigans)

2) the big companies could enact cost-saving policies that make your internet shitty. This comes in a few forms:

a) Every few months the netflix app comes up with a more aggressive way to entice its users into streaming more, but Cox doesn't like having to bear the cost of their netflix members streaming more and more movies each month. Cox could enact a bandwidth cap on traffic to netflix, and write a letter to netflix execs saying the sanction will be lifted if they stop advertising so aggressively, or if they sign a contract with Cox to locate a major datacenter within their native network. As a user the result would be I can only stream an hour during prime time before my connection slows way down, or if netflix signs the contract there are fewer original series next season.

b) A new game comes out on Steam and I want to go download it. Because of the way Steam structured their server cloud, 99% of today's Steam traffic is going through UUnet in san diego, even though Steam's cloud service is in no way even an indirect customer of UUnet's. UUnet decides they shouldn't have to bear that cost, and they restrict traffic to that CDN going through their equipment to 5%. This kind of thing happened all the time in the AOL days (90s). As this user I just won't be able to complete my download until 2AM.

I'm a bit bothered that this whole thing is probably a smokescreen. It seems like a move to lower costs for existing big corporations, not really a measure to encourage new market participants.

Again, it really comes down to who you're willing to trust. My answer right now is I really don't trust anyone to make this kind of policy.