Wave Net Neutrality Good-Bye

[English Mobster]

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=10298403

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (http://topics.abcnews.go.com/topic/Washington%2C-D.C.) ruled that the FCC lacks the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks. That was a big victory for Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, which had challenged the FCC's authority to impose such "Net neutrality" obligations on broadband providers.
tl;dr: We're fucked. Essentially the court just said that the FCC has no control over net neutrality, and that ISPs are free to block whatever they like.
:ohdear:

[CN3089]

But surely SCOTUS will overtu ahahahahahahaahaha



e: actually I always got the impression that kennedy had a hard on for state power so who knows

[Rook]

The battle over the FCC's legal jurisdiction comes amid a larger policy dispute over the merits of Net neutrality. Backed by Internet companies such as Google Inc. and the online calling service Skype, the FCC says rules are needed to prevent phone and cable companies from prioritizing some traffic or degrading or blocking cheaper Internet calling services or online video sites that compete with their core businesses.
oh look the biggest company ever backs it I think we're ok!!!

[flibitijibibo]

Come on now, Comcast. You didn't need to go through this much trouble. If you didn't want my money, all you had to do was ask. This also explains why you've been giving us the $66/month services for a fraction of that for no reason and refused to make us pay for the whole thing (that's not a joke, I swear it's true). Nothing an e-mail couldn't have done, guys.

[Cojafoji]

Uh. Apparently I should just start posting things in new topics instead (posted this in off topic articles at 12:30)...

Anyway, this is a good thing and a bad thing. ISP's will be free to shunt/limit/throttle certain types of information, however, public pressure has already caused them to change the way they do allocate bandwidth, so we should see public pressure in the future have the same measurable effect. However, if the FCC had been given oversight of broadband providers and govern what they can't block, it would also come with the ability to tell them what they CAN and SHOULD block. Just throwing that out there.

[Dwood]

This will go to the sup ct almost guaranteed.

[Cortexian]

Good thing I'm in Canada and our internets are completely unfiltered and unthrottled!

[ExAm]

All that has to happen here is that Net Neutrality be signed into law by Congress. That's been in the works for ages.

[Phopojijo]

Good thing I'm in Canada and our internets are completely unfiltered and unthrottled!You're a funny man Freelancer...

[Cortexian]

That was supposed to be partly sarcastic.

But it's mostly true.

[Good_Apollo]

Haven't we had like a dozen threads about how net neutrality is fucked? It's like this 'news' keeps rearing it's ugly head then we forget about it once it's no longer interesting and nothing ever happens anyway.

I won't hold my breath because it's somewhat becoming the new 'zomg it's Armageddon this year i swearz' of the internet.

[Warsaw]

It's actually mostly true here too.

Most people I know with Comcast can torrent things no problem. It's kind of ironic that Verizon is the one doing most of the throttling.

Fake E: ninja'd by Apollo.

[Cojafoji]

For a while, comcast was throttling torrents in our area, however, that stopped when everything going in and out became encrypted and I buckled down my security, but that was a whileeee ago. I've since switched to verizon and encountered nothing of the sort.

[paladin]

I don't think you can throttle just torrents, they'd throttle your total bandwidth hence limiting you ability to torrent.

I have Comcast and haven't once experienced any performance or bandwidth caps.

[Bodzilla]

I don't think you can throttle just torrents, they'd throttle your total bandwidth hence limiting you ability to torrent.

I have Comcast and haven't once experienced any performance or bandwidth caps.
you have no understanding on the issue.

long story short, yes they can.

[Kornman00]

That kind of reply isn't very moderator-like


It'd be resource intensive for an ISP to filter specific ports or even specific communications to specific IP endpoints. Even then, someone can just change the port they're using or change the location of where they're gathering the resource from, the ISP wouldn't get very far except in annoying the paying customer.

Luckily the ISPs don't control the standards of computers or software so they have no say or investment in any one communication "tube". So they can't really commercialize on say, your torrent traffic. They're pretty much stuck with commercializing on your overall bandwidth right now.

[Bodzilla]

That kind of reply isn't very moderator-like


It'd be resource intensive for an ISP to filter specific ports or even specific communications to specific IP endpoints. Even then, someone can just change the port they're using or change the location of where they're gathering the resource from, the ISP wouldn't get very far except in annoying the paying customer.

Luckily the ISPs don't control the standards of computers or software so they have no say or investment in any one communication "tube". So they can't really commercialize on say, your torrent traffic. They're pretty much stuck with commercializing on your overall bandwidth right now.
Bro's doing network and electrical engineering, yes they can and yes they've done it to him already.

he went through all the info he was able to get on his connection and the info, did the maths on it, crunched some numbers and rang them about it. Their reply was something onlong the lines of "yeah... hmm your not really supposed to know about that..."
that was a couple years ago, but yes they can do it.

i cant give you specifics on how but my bro proved they where doing it to him.
they're just very, very quite on it and it's not an insane difference so it mostly gets put down to torrents being slow.

[neuro]

i'd very much like to know how he calculated this fact.

[=sw=warlord]

i'd very much like to know how he calculated this fact.
I'm taking a shot in the dark here, but I would guess the same way this works (http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest.php)
Although I'm curious myself how exactly he supposed "did the maths".

[Bodzilla]

I'd have to talk to him about it.

i'm just remembering a convo from a couple years ago i had with him about it

[Jelly]

I've previously done a fair bit of reading on traffic filtering and management, and from my understanding, traffic filtering is done by reading the packet headers, then setting those as low priority. Bittorrent packets, for example, have a nice little string at the front of them that identifies it as such. Torrent 'encryption' removes these headers and makes it much harder for the ISP to tell what kind of packet it is, but I understand that there are methods for throttling these as well.

As for the resources problem, in the case of Virgin Media they outsource the throttling methods to Cisco, and I assume the saving on bandwidth is enough to cover Cisco's costs.

[Kornman00]

Yeah, when I finally got back to the states I was gonna look at switching to using SSL connections for my newsgroup service.

I'd like to know how they manage to scale this if they're off loading the process to Cisco. After all, bittorrents aren't the only P2P systems out there, so what kind of process does it take to update this filter for when new stuff comes out? If a Cisco box is blocking (in terms of threading) a stream of data while it checks the header so it can decide to throttle it or not, it sounds like there would be some intrinsic overhead involved. That or it just checks new streams and once it sees that a consitant stream is coming in with red-flagged header checks they can stop the checks and just punt, throttling that stream. The box still has to maintain that state then, so either it's sacrificing IO rates or memory usage.

I'm sure they have ways to disable this on a per-user basis too (after all, wouldn't want the CEO's to have any throttling on their connections!), so they would probably be checking to see if the user's assigned IP is currently on the list of getting-shafted-users (or if they're on a list of dont-shaft-me users, which ever is smaller, providing the fastest lookup).

[Cojafoji]

Nuclear option?

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/fcc-next/


A federal appeals court all but told the FCC Tuesday that it has no power to regulate the internet, putting large chunks of the much-lauded national broadband plan at risk. And the FCC has only itself to blame. Telecoms and many internet activists have long argued that the internet is a developing technology that was innovating so quickly that strict regulations would hamper it. In 2005, that argument drove the FCC under the Bush Administration to win a fight in the Supreme Court for the right to deregulate broadband providers (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/27/AR2005062700415.html), classifying them as an “information service,” largely outside the FCC’s power, rather than a “telecommunications service” that could be regulated like the phone system.
Following that win, the FCC simply issued a set of four principles of net freedom that it said it expected broadband companies to follow. They promised that broadband users could plug in whatever devices they wanted to their connection and then use whatever software or online application that they liked — without interference from their provider. Those principles never went through a rule-making period, and when the FCC went after Comcast for blocking peer-to-peer file sharing services, the company sued the commission in court.
And, on Tuesday, won.
Now broadband companies effectively have no regulations that constrain them, as the FCC has left itself with no statutory means to control what telecoms do with their internet networks.
A broadband company could, for instance, ink a deal with Microsoft to transfer all attempts to reach Google.com to Bing.com. The only recourse a user would have, under the ruling, would be to switch to a different provider — assuming, of course, they had an alternative to switch to.
Companies can also now prohibit you from using a wireless router you bought at the store, forcing you to use one they rent out — just as they do with cable boxes. They could also decide to charge you a fee every time you upgrade your computer, or even block you from using certain models, just as the nation’s mobile phone carriers do today.
While this might seem like a win for the nation’s broadband and wireless companies, the ruling could be so strong that it boomerangs on them. For instance, if the FCC is left without the power to implement key portions of the National Broadband Plan — a so-far popular idea — then Congress or the FCC may have to find a way to restore power to the commission. That could leave the FCC stronger than it was before the ruling.
The option favored by public interest groups is for the FCC to take the drastic course of formally reclassifying broadband as a regulated service, reversing the position it held and defended just a few years ago.
“The FCC should immediately start a proceeding bringing internet access service back under some common carrier regulation similar to that used for decades,” said Gigi Sohn, the president of the pro-net neutrality group Public Knowledge. “In our view, the FCC needs to move quickly and decisively to make sure that consumers are not left at the mercy of telephone and cable companies.”
The FCC’s own statement on the decision acknowledges it will have to do just that.
“Today’s court decision invalidated the prior Commission’s approach to preserving an open internet,” said FCC spokeswoman Jen Howard in a written statement. “But the Court in no way disagreed with the importance of preserving a free and open internet; nor did it close the door to other methods for achieving this important end.”
“Other methods” obliquely refer to either Congress passing a law giving it the power (a process that would likely take years) or the FCC reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications service — in legal terms, moving broadband from Title I to Title II of the Telecommunications Act.
Title II-type regulations should be very familiar to most Americans — they are the rules that apply to phone services. For instance, phone customers have the right to attach whatever device they like to the phone network — from rotary-dial machines to modems to fax machines — so long as they don’t harm the network. They also have the right to call anyone else in the country from friends to astrology services, and phone companies are obliged to connect the call — making them into “common carriers.”
Phone companies that own the physical lines that connect to your house have to rent them to competing services at fair rates. They also have to provide cheap services to low-income customers — subsidized by a tax known as the Universal Service Fee. And they have their prices regulated.
That doesn’t mean moving broadband into “Title II” would impose the full spectrum of telephony regulation on internet service. The FCC has a power known as “forbearance” that lets it lift selected obligations, according to Free Press’s policy counsel Aparna Sridhar.
“Let’s say Title II has 50 provisions,” Sridhar said. “The commission can decide 48 of these don’t make sense for broadband, but one or two or three do. It will be a skinny Title II. Monopoly-style rate regulation is not necessarily the outcome.”
Another consideration is whether the FCC would then be in the business of regulating the content of the internet — as it famously does with fines against broadcasters for profanity on the radio or over-the-air television. Sridhar said that wouldn’t have to be the case.
“If the FCC decided to reclassify the underlying transmission, that doesn’t mean that Hulu or The New York Times or your favorite app will be regulated.”
Hoping to prevent the FCC from reclassifying broadband, the Wireless Association — an opponent of net neutrality rules — argued before the ruling arrived that the Comcast case wouldn’t undermine the national broadband plan.
“I don’t think the National Broadband Plan is in jeopardy, based on the Comcast case,” Guttman-McCabe said a day before the ruling. “Look at things about disclosure and even the Universal Service Fund — there is no need to have Title II authority to address those issues.”
But the court’s reasoning undermines Guttman-McCabe’s theory. While it was tangential to the net neutrality case, the appeals court took the time to point out that the Universal Service Fund was approved by the courts only because it was tied to the FCC’s “Title II responsibility to set reasonable interstate telephone rates.” In short, the court is saying that the Universal Service Fund couldn’t be changed to support broadband, since the FCC has no similar mandate to set broadband rates.
The Wireless Association welcomed the ruling in a written statement Tuesday, ignoring the tricky question of how the FCC could implement large portions of the National Broadband Plan without the authority to regulate broadband.
“Today’s unanimous and very thorough opinion in the Comcast case makes clear that the FCC needs to focus on the important task of making the promise of the National Broadband Plan a reality by spurring investment, innovation and job growth, and turn away from calls to impose restrictive regulations on broadband providers and the internet ecosystem,” said Steve Largent, the group’s CEO.
Comcast also welcomed the ruling, while trying to strike a conciliatory note by saying it likes the idea of open internet principles.
“We are gratified by the Court’s decision today to vacate the previous FCC’s order,” said Sena Fizmaurice, a Comcast spokeswoman. “Comcast remains committed to the FCC’s existing open internet principles, and we will continue to work constructively with this FCC as it determines how best to increase broadband adoption and preserve an open and vibrant internet.”
Meanwhile, Thursday marks a now odd deadline the FCC’s attempt to bolster its net neutrality authority by creating a proper rule-making process last fall that would have codified the ad hoc principles it used to go after Comcast.
Companies and interest groups were set to file final comments by Thursday on that rulemaking — which rested on the same arguments the court just struck down.
That makes the proceeding mostly useless, even though the FCC will still likely take the comments to heart, if and when it ever regains any authority over broadband.


Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/fcc-next/#ixzz0kRmxH17h

[Dwood]

cmon fcc you've gotta break up Comcast, they're just too huge man. obama, you're all about this freedom crap aren't you? kill dat monopoleeh.

[paladin]

cmon fcc you've gotta break up Comcast, they're just too huge man. obama, you're all about this freedom crap aren't you? kill dat monopoleeh.


HAHAHAHA

[Rook]

cmon fcc you've gotta break up Comcast, they're just too huge man. obama, you're all about this freedom crap aren't you? kill dat monopoleeh.

serious post: i literally just lol'd so hard