US court strikes down FCC net neutrality policy

[Pangloss]

Hm, we need to talk to blike about the user agreement at SFN. Clearly we can be doing a lot more with that.

[bascule]

http://mashable.com/2010/05/05/fcc-net-neutrality-2/

 

The FCC went ahead with regulating ISPs as telcos, which will subject them to common carrier laws.

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And the industry response is to astroturf as citizens groups, according to a leaked PowerPoint obtained by ThinkProgress:

 

 

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/05/11/netneutrality-grover-afp/

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73 Democrats signed a letter urging the FCC to drop net neutrality

 

Boooooo!

[Moontanman]

I've been reading this thread and I have to admit I'm not sure exactly what the argument is. part of it seems to be we have choices in Internet service providers. From what I understand the choices are more like levels of participation.

 

You have dial up, yes people still have dial up, i do, and it's AOL, as far as I know I've never been restricted as to what i can view on the net by AOL, i can choose to be restricted and I've had some run ins with some sort of nationwide service that has told me how much they want to protect me from porn or unfamily friendly content but i told them to f**k off and they went away. I'm not sure where they came from or how they got access to AOL but i think it was someone who was trying to scare people off certain sites, in this case a pagan site i was talking to.

 

Where I live there are many dial up providers, they are all equally slow and full of adds.

 

Then they have somewhat higher speed providers, at&t being the only one i know of right off hand in my area but i am sure there are others.

 

You also have people like dish-network but that's a different story, I'd have to set up a dish on the side of my house and it is grossly effected by weather and so on.

 

Then you have broad band, in my area only Road Runner provides broadband..

 

Since i prefer to have a hard line instead of a wireless my options are limited. I used to have RR who has a deal with AOL or is owned by AOL or RR owns AOL or something like that so when i had to go back to dial up AOL still had all my stuff saved from RR. i probably got screwed by misinformation but dial up is pretty much dial up so WTF.

 

It seems to me that in my area at least there is so little choice that saying you have options is putting the cart ahead of the horse. My options are limited from what I see, if I'm wrong them please school me on the subject but how can you allow providers to edit the content of the web if you can't get anyone else to provide the service?

 

Is money the real factor here for freedom of access to the net? Do only people who can afford it in affluent areas where there are many servers have real choice?

[bascule]

The real issue is that ISPs claim to be providers of access to a network. When we think of the telephone network, it'd be appalling if a particular phone company blocked access to certain numbers. Imagine if a particular company blocked calls to a particular political party's voter hotlines.

 

We have recent case history of Comcast blocking access to content distributed via the BitTorrent protocol by deliberately forging traffic. Can you imagine if the phone company forged phone calls, calling you repeatedly from the number of a particular political party's campaign hotline, in an attempt to get you to vote for the opposite party?

 

The FCC is simply arguing that the Internet is as essential a service as the telephone system and deserves some form of government protection to ensure everyone has free access to it.

 

The ISPs/telcos are spinning this as some form of Internet censorship, when really, what they're trying to preserve is their right to censor certain cost prohibitive parts of the Internet from the customers by deliberately blocking or forging traffic.

 

Net neutrality is really a no brainer to me, but unfortunately, the industry is out in force against it, filling the debate full of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, as illustrated by the powerpoint slide I linked earlier.

[ParanoiA]

The ISPs/telcos are spinning this as some form of Internet censorship' date=' when really, what they're trying to preserve is their right to censor certain cost prohibitive parts of the Internet from the customers by deliberately blocking or forging traffic.

 

Net neutrality is really a no brainer to me, but unfortunately, the industry is out in force against it, filling the debate full of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, as illustrated by the powerpoint slide I linked earlier.[/quote']

 

The FCC has done more to ruin freedom of communication than any private force.

 

At the end of the day, your argument is a consumer's argument. You have failed to prove any right to authority over their equipment, absent subsidized services.

 

Your arguments are sound, that is, they are a statement of expectation you wish to place on the business and is quite pluralized. I sure as hell expect access to everything I want. But I have no right to force them to accept content on their servers. Just another extension of the private property use discussion.

 

What if they block a web page that launches a virus? Some idiot could argue that he has a right to that web page, virus or not and expect to force them to have to negotiate dangerous content that jeopardizes their whole network.

 

What if someone wants a "clean" internet experience? The ISP doesn't get to sell that service? Unless the government approves or something?

 

It's not your property. You have no right to dictate how it's used as an authority. Likewise, you have every right to dictate how it's used as a consumer and punish them using your wallet. I will happily join you, and probably scream louder than you on that one.

[Mr Skeptic]

Well I say, if they want to be responsible for the content of the data they transfer, then they should be free to choose what to allow and what not to allow. If they want to say they're not responsible for the content of the data they transfer, then they had better shut up and transfer it.

[bascule]

At the end of the day, your argument is a consumer's argument. You have failed to prove any right to authority over their equipment, absent subsidized services.

 

Everything else aside, billions of dollars for "their equipment" came from the government's Universal Service Fund, and they are still yet to deliver on the promise of "Broadband For All".

 

It's not your property. You have no right to dictate how it's used as an authority. Likewise, you have every right to dictate how it's used as a consumer and punish them using your wallet. I will happily join you, and probably scream louder than you on that one.

 

I guess you just completely don't get it whatsoever. You think because it's their equipment that gives them the right to manipulate my traffic. The traffic belongs to me, not them. It is my intellectual property. They are merely providing a common carrier service for my traffic.

 

Would you tolerate it if a parcel company accidentally lost one of your belongings and didn't do anything to reimburse you for it? It's their delivery system and their equipment after all! They should get carte blanche to do whatever they want with it. Right? Even if it loses or damages your property. No, that's not how common carriers work. Your property doesn't become theirs because it enters their service. It's still your property and they don't have the right to mutilate or destroy it.

[ParanoiA]

I guess you just completely don't get it whatsoever. You think because it's their equipment that gives them the right to manipulate my traffic. The traffic belongs to me, not them. It is my intellectual property. They are merely providing a common carrier service for my traffic.

 

That traffic goes through their equipment. They have every right to control it.

 

The phone company doesn't allow you to hook up any goofy device you want to your phone line and expect it to work either. You must meet their standards before you can use their equipment that way.

 

Since voice traffic is physically isolated from the signaling and carrier layers they have no fear of harming their network with any creepy calls you want to make.

 

But there is no such isolation with pure digital. Their servers could crash and burn if you accessed the right virus. No such harmless expectation exists in this business.

 

So no, I don't get it.

 

Would you tolerate it if a parcel company accidentally lost one of your belongings and didn't do anything to reimburse you for it? It's their delivery system and their equipment after all! They should get carte blanche to do whatever they want with it. Right? Even if it loses or damages your property. No, that's not how common carriers work. Your property doesn't become theirs because it enters their service. It's still your property and they don't have the right to mutilate or destroy it.

 

That's an invalid analogy since I never agreed it was ok to destroy your transmission or your intellectual property. They should be able to restrict it, however. The proper analogy would be a parcel service that won't deliver my package at all, for some silly reason they dream up. Yes, I would be pissed. But I have no right to send the government after them to make them carry my package - which could contain a bomb, poison, illicit substances..etc.

 

They have every right to examine my package, and reject it. It's their facilities at risk here.

[Pangloss]

I don't think Net Neutrality is that black and white -- it's not a tradeoff that automatically damages the line owners. There's no reason to assume that we can't protect the rights of all stakeholders involved, but it would be foolish for us to not recognize the fact that society has become a stakeholder in the value of the Internet.

 

We can protect the equipment investment of the line owner and the rights of the end user at the same time. But that entails recognizing a few basic, common rights of users.

[ParanoiA]

FCC Opens Inquiry On Broadband Regulation

 

And here we go with the "protection" excuse...

 

The Notice of Inquiry adopted by a 3-2 vote dominated by the three Democratic commissioners seeks to "identify the legal approach that will best support its efforts to ensure universal access to affordable, high-quality broadband services; promote broadband innovation, investment, and competition; and protect and empower consumers." Public comments -- and a flood of them is expected -- are to be accepted until July 12, with reply comments due August 12.

 

They're going to clean it up all nice and neat for us; force a premium distinction so we get to pay for our deviancy. They'll ruin it like they ruined TV and radio. And we'll accept it to the point we don't even notice....just like TV and radio. Bleeping words, black bars over "offensive" body parts....yeah that's real tolerant and free...

 

Sanitized internet. Hope you're ready. You'll be telling your kids how free and limitless the internet used to be.