“F.C.C. Plans Net Neutrality Repeal in a Victory for Telecoms” (nytimes):
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.
“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.”
“We are disappointed that the proposal announced today by the F.C.C. fails to maintain the strong net neutrality protections that will ensure the internet remains open for everyone,” Erin Egan, a vice president at Facebook, said in a statement. “We will work with all stakeholders committed to this principle.”
In some ways this is a yawn because it takes us back to where the Internet was for decades. But, on the other hand the Internet didn’t always have the addictive services that it has now.
What if Verizon were to offer a plan to businesses that limited access to non-work sites, e.g., Facebook, to 15 minutes per day? That would be illegal under the regulations adopted recently, but legal if the current FCC revokes them.
A lot of companies, of course, run firewalls that block Netflix, Facebook, et al., on their wired and WiFi internal networks. But if the company provides a phone with unlimited LTE data maybe there is no current practical and legal way to stop employees from spending time on these services during the workday (because the handheld device gets Internet service without going through the company’s Facebook-blocking firewall).
[What do my Facebook friends say about this return to the 2014 rules? “This is huge. This is terrible. This is the beginning of the end. This is fascism. … This is the beginning of censorship the likes of which we have never seen.”]
On the third hand, how would it be possible for Internet providers to block particular sites as the New York Times suggests? If consumers are using a VPN service (example) then how would the ISP have any idea which sites were being visited? Even if consumers aren’t using a VPN service, wouldn’t censoring sites expose an ISP to the risk of losing lucrative municipal monopolies? Time Warner doesn’t want a city council deciding to allow Verizon FiOS to compete, right? Why give politicians a chance to take money from Verizon, give Verizon a license, and say that they’re doing it in the name of free speech?
Finally, why would we expect a change to net neutrality laws to result in significantly higher rates paid by consumers? If the Internet providers are monopolies (which they are in a lot of places, including Cambridge, Massachusetts (part of Komcast Kountry)) and they’ve read an Econ 101 textbook they are already extracting the maximum $$ from consumers via their Triple Play plans.
Related:
“What if Verizon were to offer a plan to businesses that limited access to non-work sites, e.g., Facebook, to 15 minutes per day? That would be illegal under the regulations adopted recently, but legal if the current FCC revokes them.”
Facebook and other social media are usually already blocked at large and medium corporations.
Your headline should say “Facebook _for_ net neutrality”, right?
I think they are worried about ads being blocked by ISPs and replaced with their own ones.
It’s 100% about streaming media. All the other stuff is flack noise. Silicon Valley is making money on video ads and services and they don’t want ISPs to have the option of throttling that stuff with QoS. They’re saying it should be illegal for you to buy a cheap internet connection that throttles streaming media and everybody should have to buy very expensive connections so that everyone can continuously watch streaming media.
Having a VPN service is expensive. We’d all rather deal with the popups from Comca$t & takedown notices from AT&T we’ve gotten for the last 10 years than pay the extra $40/year for something which in our minds should be free.
The regulation also allows the government to declare “illegal” sites (e.g. WikiLeaks) and force isps to block them. This is already happening on a large scale in Russia (ie RosComNadzor) and a few other countries. It’s a very slippery slope.
The existing net neutrality rules allow the sale of cheap & slow/metered connections which would not support streaming media. The existing rules also allow the sale of devices which limit access to FB (on the device). If these products are not available it is probably because nobody wants them, not because of net neutrality rules.
Getting rid of net neutrality rules enables monopoly/oligopoly internet providers to leverage that status into monopoly/oligopoly positions on content. Allowing them to collect the corresponding rents would require a very compelling public interest; nothing suggested so far comes close.
lion #5, looks like you are working for a business in period of bootstapping . Even shops with less than 10 full time developers that I worked for had VPNs, for very long time. Unless of course you guys are in outsourcing/insourcing business, than you sure do not care of security issues.
The irony, of course, is that Google, Facebook, et. al. currently do content-filtering on a massive scale. I guess censorship is only dangerous when other people are doing it.
That is, of course, if the ISP allows VPNs. There have been court cases where rural providers blocked competitive VOIP and VPN services.
Russil: I did mean “net neutrality tweaks” and updated the headline. As you point out, Facebook is apparently in favor of the current net neutrality regime.
Neal, the result of making it illegal to use QoS routing to throttle streaming media as needed is ultimately that nobody can get a cheap high speed internet connection, even if it’s metered. The network infrastructure will have to be built out such that every house/apartment has sufficient bandwidth to simultaneously stream separately from netflix/amazon/google as well as whatever virtual reality crap eventually becomes available. This is the fundamental problem. It’s expensive to build out and maintain this infrastructure. It’s a lot easier to just start throttling the netflix connections at prime time for “non-premium” customers. Netflix is saying it should be illegal to throttle them at 8:30PM for people who want to pay less money to the ISP, but still have a cheap, fast, un-metered connection.
VPN is a total non-starter. So few people even understand it, let alone want to pay for it and configure it. I don’t understand why everyone is talking about it. Even Cringley was saying it was going to be the magic bullet to kill the FCC’s rule reversal. Any tiered plan the ISP’s create would de-prioritize that traffic, because it would (obviously) go against what they’re (presumptively) trying to do, and so few people would complain. I wish all of these discussions would just forget about it.
You think ISP’s are already extracting maximum rent? You don’t think they could get away with gouging people another $5/mo to lift an artificial reduction in QoS they will put on the connection in order to “speed up” Facebook and Instagram? Or YouTube? I have an 8-year-old boy. His entire internet usage is YT (and Roblox). The rest of the internet might as well not exist for him. Mess with that, and there’s going to be trouble.
Gaming will be a big one, if the ISP’s introduced tiered plans. It’s actually not nearly as much traffic as streaming video, but it _feels_ like it must be a lot, because of how much is going on in a modern multiplayer game like Battlefield. I’m out of the scene now, but all the flack that EA has taken over Battlefront II just goes to show how much the market it willing to “pay for win.” (Yeah, they shut it down, but it will be back, because the silent majority actually wants it.) Since micro transactions DO actually work for game companies, I extrapolate this to assume that there’s a market for ISP’s to sell super-fast ping times to game servers, if such a thing could be done in their routing.
For a list of malfeasance the ISP’s have ALREADY done:
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/69dnox/fcc_chief_net_neutrality_rules_treating_internet/dh6ezem/
They absolutely will stack a bunch of premium charges on top of one of the already-lowest-ranked ISP systems in the world.
All I know is one day the government became very insistent that we needed to pass big bills “fixing,” with government regulation, a problem that has never existed but TOTALLY MIGHT SOON… for no discernable reason. That should make any thinking citizen suspicious.
I suspect SOPA/PIPA-style regulations hidden in net neutrality legislation that make downloading certain content not just copyright infringement but otherwise illegal and more severely punishable. (And how would they know what you’re doing without deep packet inspection of your traffic?) That, and I’m sure the FCC has wanted to regulate internet content forever and sees a way to do that with these laws. And none of our elected officials want figure candidates to be able to circumvent the media and get elected the way Trump did, so that probably factors into their desire for more control, too.
If course
(Sorry, submitted before finished.)
* Of course, on the business side of things this is all about Netflix and other streaming services not wanting to pay the ISPs for the disproportionate amount of strain they place on the internet backbone. They started this entire “movement,” I’m sure. Thought the bigger ISPs will ultimately be fine with net neutrality if it means smaller ISPs will be regulated out of the market. Strangely, nobody who is passionate about net neutrality seems to care about the government-allowed ISP monopolies that keep our prices as high as they are. I guess they’re selective in their consumer advocacy.
This entire subject is sketchy as hell and shouldn’t be taken at face value.
Anything Comcast is for is suspect.