FCC To Make Move On Net Neutrality 232
GrApHiX42 writes "The FCC will announce on Thursday it plans to pursue a 'third way' forward in the fight for tough net neutrality rules, opening a new front in an ongoing legal battle that could come to define the commission under Chairman Julius Genachowski. A senior FCC official said Wednesday that the chairman 'will seek to restore the status quo as it existed' before a federal court ruled it lacked the authority to regulate broadband providers and set rules that mandate open Internet. The goal is to 'fulfill the previously stated agenda of extending broadband to all Americans, protecting consumers, ensuring fair competition, and preserving a free and open Internet,' the FCC official said."
We need net neutrality to prevent censorship (Score:5, Interesting)
Without net neutrality regulation, I fear that providers will have far too much power to censor content. In my area, there is only one choice for broadband: Comcast. My provider has already demonstrated a willingness to censor based on protocol and re-direct DNS lookup failures to their own search engine. I don't trust them at all to act in the best interest of the consumer when sites like Hulu and iTunes start directly competing against cable TV offerings for content.
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But what about their right to free speech through censorship? It's just their own way of communicating with you!
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There's another provider in your area, that gives access to quite a few other providers.
Downside is, 56 kbps downstream.
Re:We need net neutrality to prevent censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
For a lot of people, that isn't an option.
Boss: I need those reports back from the 20 MB spreadsheets I gave you.
Employee: Sure thing, boss! You should have the first one a couple days from now!
Even for standard "web surfing and email" type access, dialup is inadequate. For any type of real work, it's not an option at all.
That's quite aside from the fact that fewer and fewer people need or want POTS anymore at all. To get POTS just to accommodate dialup, plus the dialup, you'll probably be paying more than basic broadband.
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You know, I remember my 128 kbit ISDN. I seem to recall having no issues uploading or downloading 20MB within a reasonable amount of time.
And I remember that cost about $1,000 to install when I had it.
Show me a $1,000 56kbit POTS line, please.
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ISDN is barely broadband, much less "basic broadband" so what exactly was your point?
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Maybe I should say "what basic broadband costs now". I strongly doubt ISDN costs that now, though I also haven't looked into it in quite some time.
As to 20 MB being a reasonable amount of time, you've got a very tolerant boss, apparently. Even if we figure that the ISDN operated at absolute maximum capacity for the full transfer, 128 kbit = 16 kB per second. At that rate, transferring a 20 MB file would take (20000 KB/16 KB/s) = 1250 seconds = 20.8 minutes. And that's under the most optimal circumstances. A
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Re:We need net neutrality to prevent censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
There is money to be made breaking net neutrality, so as soon as corporations think they can get away with it, they will. With politicians, though, we've seen that there is power to be had both supporting and fighting net neutrality, so at the very least we get a little longer before neutrality is gone.
Re:We need net neutrality to prevent censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
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Assinine companies suing them when they try.
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Surely you have more choices than that. There's satellite broadband and cellular broadband available just about anywhere, or you could VPN past your ISP's traffic shaping (they can't shape what they can't inspect), or you could get a leased line, or set up a neighborhood Internet co-op.
Re:We need net neutrality to prevent censorship (Score:4, Informative)
Re:We need net neutrality to prevent censorship (Score:5, Informative)
they can't shape what they can't inspect
Sure they can. They'll just throttle any encrypted traffic that isn't on standard ports.
Re:We need net neutrality to prevent censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
And they will know it's encrypted how, exactly? Yes, your typical encrypted data stream looks like random bits, but so does well compressed data.
So either you have to block all data that looks compressed or encrypted, which is a nice way to fuck yourself as a bandwidth provider since people will stop compressing shit to get past your filter, or you have to actually attempt to decompress and look inside any high-entropy data stream. How many reasonably well-deployed compression methods are there? Well, I'd guess about a hundred, if you include various audio and video codecs. So you need to run a number of decompression attempts just to distinguish compressed data from encrypted data. And you really have to DECOMPRESS IT, not just scan for magic numbers or certain headers, because hell, I'll just throw those on there for good measure to confuse you.
Okay, so now that you've established that the data is a compressed stream, you need to look inside the decompressed data to see if that itself looks like its encrypted. Sure, it's boneheaded to compress encrypted data, since it's already such high entropy, but how can you know? Especially when there are people like me trying to get around your filter? You can't, unless you try the whole process again recursively. Obviously, at some point you'll give up. Say you set the bar at two levels of nesting -- at that point it's just too expensive to keep analyzing. Well, that's going to have a shitload of false positives, because people do stupid shit like zip up a video file, which doesn't really gain you that much but is certainly widely done, and would trigger your "give up" signal -- at that point, do you fail open or fail closed? Do you reject a huge amount of traffic that's not encrypted, pissing everyone off and rendering your own service unusable and therefore worthless -- or do you throw your hands up and let the data stream through?
Yeah, sure. They'll just "throttle any encrypted traffic." Good luck with that.
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It pleases me to imagine a new data protocol, one with an encrypted data channel riding on a "plain text" channel. Imagine a stream of HTML with images and attachments, the encrypted data being impressed like steganography on the images and attachments. Sure, it's very low efficiency, but it would be highly difficult and unprofitable to try to discriminate the encrypted data channel. The scheme even carries a pleasing level of schadenfreude in that you are screwing The Man with lots of frivolous plain te
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Your scheme, while brilliant, is inefficient to such excess that it is self-defeating.
To perform steganography effectively (read: "undetectably"), one must bury the data within normal-looking noise. The amount of adjustable noise required increases proportionately with the amount of desired steganogaphically-encoded data. So, to encode a Big Thing (a movie, say), you need Lots Of Noise, or rather, a substantially larger amount of adjustable normal-looking data than that which you intend to send.
This makes
Wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
"We need [to give the government the power to censor] to prevent [private] censorship."
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There I fixed your comment for you.
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Don't be too quick to bring the Trojan Horse into the city walls.
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I don't like private or public censorship but I can tell you that private censorship is a lot easier to get away from and likely to be a lot shorter lived.
Re:Wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think you're looking at this the right way. It's not viewed as the government censoring Comcast or ANYONE for that matter. There is no removing the freedom of speech by the FCC anywhere in this. The only perpetrators of that in this particular instance is the content provider.
It's funny how these days people view it as "I gotta be in the corporations camp" or "I gotta support the government" when there's a hidden option: "I support my own views." Google tries to kick China in the balls for freedom of speech? Great! Uncle Sam trying to give the ISPs a slap for being mean to their customers? Great! Now, the converse is not supporting things you don't like. Don't jump on a bandwagon here, unless it's going in the direction that's best for all.
Better to me (Score:4, Funny)
Just make them common carrier (Score:4, Interesting)
Just make ISPs common carriers like the phone companies. Then the FCC can enforce the rules it wants.
Re:Just make them common carrier (Score:5, Insightful)
Just make ISPs common carriers like the phone companies. Then the FCC can enforce the rules it wants.
Not "common carriers" but rather just "telecommunications services" rather than "information services."
Ironically, it was the FCC itself that recategorized ISPs as "information services" [wikipedia.org] and thus opened the door for all of this bullshit in the first place. You would think that since the trouble started with the FCC, they could just change their minds and put things back the way they were so that IP was treated the same as Voice and all the neutrality rules would then apply again.
Common carrier (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't they just make ISPs common carriers. A common carrier has to take anyone's traffic without favor or discrimination (as long as the customer can pay). The concept has served us very well for things like telephones and railways. I find it hard to understand why it doesn't automatically apply to ISPs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier [wikipedia.org]
Re:Common carrier (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why don't they just make ISPs common carriers. A common carrier has to take anyone's traffic without favor or discrimination (as long as the customer can pay). The concept has served us very well for things like telephones and railways. I find it hard to understand why it doesn't automatically apply to ISPs.
ISPs don't have the history of monopolistic abuse that telcos and railways do.
Fundamentally, that's why they've managed to play by a different set of rules.
IMHO, the FCC is changing the regulatory landscape because of ISPs' greed.
It was pretty much over for them once they started saying things like:
"We're going to filter what we want"
"Google should pay us to reach our customers"
They really did this to themselves.
... OR (Score:3, Insightful)
The FCC could just, you know, respect the fact that we live in a representative democracy and that as unelected bureaucrats that don't get to invent new laws restricting the free behavior of the people. The FCC could lobby Congress to write a law implementing what they want, instead of trying to tyrannically decide for us what they think is best.
I am mostly in favor of Net Neutrality (especially in cases where there's a de facto monopoly for a particular broadband provider). But I am not in favor of the FCC making up its own rules. I am in favor of elected representatives voting so we can hold them accountable in the end.
Re:... OR (Score:4, Interesting)
something off center about your argument. fcc is executive, but it also has legislative and judicial functions. In fact, these extras are impossible to get rid of.
this area is called administrative law. It is supposed to be simple, informal, and navigateable without a lawyer :-)
the reason it is constitutional is that while you have go into the admin court system, when you exhaust your remedies, you get to go to the usual courts in the other branch of government.
as far as rules, agencies can make all sorts of binding rules, persumedly from within their enabling language. and all the admin judges will take them as gospel. but once you leave the admin system, the other judges will feel quite free to slap the agency around.
Actually, having rules is a positive. I have seen programs repeatedly try to run without any rules! for the admin review judge, a question becomes "do i shut this program down". Interesting considerations at that point.
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the reason it is constitutional
It's not. That's why the FCC lost the case 3-0.
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yah, this particular rule was unconstitional, presumedly because the fcc could not make a good case that congress had given them that particular authority area. I admit i have not read the actual decision. but no one is ever going to say the fcc cannot make rules. but originally, someone was seemingly complaining about the existence of fcc rule making apparatus.
The appeals court’s 3-0 decision, which was written by one of the court’s more liberal members, Judge David S. Tatel, focused on the
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Your argument makes sense, but the flaw is that democracy doesn't work that way. Yes, in theory, we could remove any elected official that blocks net neutrality, or any other law that would make sense to any reasonable, moral human being. In truth, all that matters is how much PR you pull, how much the lobbyists bribe you, etc. that wins you an election.
Where everything really gets derailed is in the court's ruling that gave cable companies a monopoly on their lines. If you open up the lines to allow compet
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Your argument makes sense, but the flaw is that democracy doesn't work that way.
No offense, but tough shit. The fact that representative democracy doesn't always work well doesn't give anyone the right to make up laws outside of that system.
But if this is what it takes to get net neutrality, well better than nothing I say.
If by "this" you mean "the FCC illegally making up its own law," that's unacceptable. The rule of law must be followed, because if we don't follow it here, we can't rely on it later.
That said, I agree with you that the problem is the overregulation. Net Neutrality is "needed" because of a lack of competition created by federal regulation.
I can't
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If by "this" you mean "the FCC illegally making up its own law," that's unacceptable. The rule of law must be followed, because if we don't follow it here, we can't rely on it later.
What are you smoking? The entire purpose of the FCC is to "make up laws" (as you put it) about the communications systems in the country. Do you think Congress passes a law for each frequency band saying what it can be used for? No, they delegated that authority to the FCC. Now, obviously they can only regulate the matters that have actually been delegated to them by Congress, but to try to imply that it's totally outrageous for the FCC to regulate on net neutrality is bogus.
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Allowing Congress to write the Net neutrality laws is a recipe for red-tape and a sure fire way to disaster, especially with a partisan atmosphere and the-party-of-NO-GO republicans.
Irrelevant.
At least with the tyranny of FCC ...
It is NOT LEGAL. It VIOLATES OUR CIVIL RIGHTS. You're not getting it. This is simply unacceptable. Unelected bureaucrats have no right to make laws to tell us what to do. Period.
Let the FCC come up with a framework and guidelines and have it be voted upon by the representatives via a quick simple procedure.
The FCC can writes laws any time it wants to, and give them to someone in Congress to submit as proper legislation.
Our representatives are too vulnerable to be swayed by ISPs and their lobbyists
No moreso than the members of the FCC.
And you forgot to mention "and other special interests" (which includes groups like the EFF) If you make this government-vs-ISP then you're already setting it up to
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So you think that, until Congress gets around to approving net neutrality laws, that instead of being regulated by the body designed to do just that ...
There is no body designed to regulate Net Neutrality. That's the point.
It seems to me that if you're concerned about civil rights, your argument hands your nose over to Comcast, just to spite your face.
It seems to me that you would have the law violated just to get what you want.
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Ah. A holy Constitutionalist. Except probably for the parts of the Constitution you don't like.
You're a liar. You cannot give an example of me disfavoring something in the Constitution just because I don't like it.
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You are either uninformed or choosing to ignore the facts
Identify such a fact. (You didn't. You added more to what I didn't say, but nothing you said contradicted or argued against anything I said.)
they have the power to classify the services how they see fit.
False. They have to do it within the standards set by the law. But they do have significant latitude, yes.
And -- at the very least -- since the FCC did change the classification, they have to abide by the laws governing that classification until it changes again. And I can't see them changing it again any time soon, but, you never know.
and by definition since they are local monopolies you don't have a choice to go elsewhere.
Yes, again, this is why I sa
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I am in favor of at least SOME Net Neutrality regulations, especially for de facto monopolies
Why don't we get rid of the regulations (i.e: franchise agreements) that created those de-facto monopolies in the first place?
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Indeed.
Third way? (Score:2)
Hmm, I'm guessing large subsidies for improving broadband, but with strings attached, such that the businesses receiving the money have to abide by net neutrality and respect the FCC.
This might be the time (Score:2)
If anyone has ever had anything to say on the subject, now might be the time to repeat whatever has been said to those with the potential to influence this process. It would be ashame to look back on a period of time, and realize that the moment to really influence it has passed.
Fight the FCC? (Score:3, Interesting)
Considering that the FCC can open up WiMax, and initiatives such as O3b may demonstrate that MEO satellite systems can offer nearly fiber speeds to third world nations, aren't the TelCo's just slitting their own throats? If companies like Google, ones that make more money by increasing the number of people who can access the internet and there services, are willing and able to offer free or nearly free internet access via low latency MEO satellite constellations and other radio transmission methods. why would agencies such as the FCC want to stop them?
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Offer them a deal..
Common carrier status in exchange for net neutrality.
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That's what classifying them Title II would mean, they don't want that.
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Just what we need, a government takeover of another entire industry.
How 'bout we do something to increase competition, instead.
Re:More government encroachment (Score:5, Insightful)
Like having the government take over the parts of the industry that are inherently monopolistic (ie. wires; the barrier to entry for that essentially amounts to putting your own set of wires around the entire country) and having them rent out those wires to ISPs, who would then become competitive?
It's really the only way to have a free market in internet service at this point.
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Like having the government take over the parts of the industry that are inherently monopolistic (ie. wires; the barrier to entry for that essentially amounts to putting your own set of wires around the entire country) and having them rent out those wires to ISPs, who would then become competitive?
It's really the only way to have a free market in internet service at this point.
Just a quick question: Who put all those wires there in the first place?
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Re:More government encroachment (Score:5, Interesting)
> Just a quick question: Who paid for/subsidized those wires?
You are getting close to the truth of the matter. Yes the telcos paid to put in the wires but it was subsidized in a way. It was part of a deal where AT&T would run wires to MOST[1] of the country in exchange for a monopoly.
So every time this topic comes up I remind people of the only long term solution that would actually work and get ignored. Break up the phone companies one more time, this time along the correct lines. Company A gets the monopoly, the local loops and the COs and sells access at rates set by the government. Company B puts dialtone, IP or video on the wire along with as many other companies who want to compete. And do it for the cable companies as well, they have had enough time extracting monopoly rents they can be split along the same lines of the natural monopoly vs the value added services.
But of course what we get is the government will essentially nationalize the Internet. Service will go to hell if you can even get past the political cleansing. And with Big Media having achieved regulatory capture decades ago the p2p scene will be toast.
[1] Even then they carved out a lot of really rural areas that they wouldn't serve, which is why there are small local phone companies that have been around for a really long time. But all are way out in flyover country where 'real' people never go and thus are ignored.
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You are getting close to the truth of the matter. Yes the telcos paid to put in the wires but it was subsidized in a way. It was part of a deal where AT&T would run wires to MOST[1] of the country in exchange for a monopoly.
Really? AT&T put in all the miles of fiber we now have back in the 40's? AT&Ts deal with the government was so many years ago that the lines they installed have long ago been outmoded. They were never designed to carry the amount, or type, of traffic that our modern communi
Re:More government encroachment (Score:5, Informative)
> AT&T put in all the miles of fiber we now have back in the 40's?
Ok, you asked for it. So sit right down and lemme tell ya a tale.
Back in the 90's there were first stirrings of the sort of reform I am talking about. They didn't split em but they did force the telcos to allow competition of a sort. Remember the CLECs? There was a lot wrong in how that scheme was setup, with the incumbent carrier retaining an unhealthy advantage but it was a start and it scared the piss out of the telcos. So they got their pet congressman (Rep Billy Tauzin R-LA in fact but R-BellSouth in reality) to knife the CLECs. This set off a chain reaction that led killed off the CLECs, and most small ISPs because they had become CLECs to get access to low enough rates to stay in the game; that in turn killed the equipment makers that depended on them, i.e. Lucent, Nortel, et al. The contagion spread until it became known as the .bomb.
Perhaps you read about that back in 2000 if you were the sort to read business pages. The rest of the country found out in 2001 after the Presidential race was over with, a major market meltdown didn't fit the media's narrative of that race you see; the story of the Clinton economic miracle that we could keep going if we elected Algore.
While the threat was solved for now, the telcos were determined a shift in their political fortunes wouldn't see a rebirth of competition. So while they had the power they used it. They bought themselves a law that would exempt any new fiber investment from being subject to being opened to competition. They told us that without that promise we would all be stuck on dialup and become uncompetitive in the world economy. And so Congress gave them what they wanted and then some, heck they even threw direct cash at em! And they are slowly rolling out fiber.... and rolling up the copper as they go. So they just refreshed the monopoly. Who cares what it cost, that gets passed to the end customer anyway.
Note that the government is just as liable for the Kaboom! as the telcos. So giving any of them more power is a bad idea.
Re:More government encroachment (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, nice try. The last time telcos had to worry about the meddling regulators was after the 1996 law passed. I remember...there was a period of about 5 years where the ILECs stumbled because they didn't know what hit them. There was budding competition, plenty of CLECs, that's when cable got in the broadband and telephony business. ILECs were fined for delaying facilities and repair orders for CLEC customers. You could get dial tone or DSL from a dozen competing providers.
Eventually, the ILECs regrouped, merged their way back to consolidation and monopoly status, put their competitors out of business with a combination of downright dirty tricks like delaying orders or claiming lack of facilities and predatory pricing....and what little complaints there were got silenced by their well paid lobbyists.
Revising history to conform to an idealogy is fun...but that doesn't mean it's the truth.
You think Tauzin or Dingell knew what they were doing? And Crazy "My Tubes" Eddie knew anything past his bottom line? Someone has to represent the public interest....clearly industry leaders and elected officials are not up to the task....the FCC needs to be strengthened and chartered with regulating all facets of "connectivity" before India and China eat our lunch. Oh wait, they already are.
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Just where did I mention any company besides AT&T? That was the one company mentioned in the post I replied to, and they got their monopoly on phone service lines several decades ago.
I realize the games that have been played since then, but that isn't the point. If you're going to mention one specific company as an example then make it something relevant, something current. AT&Ts original lines, as well as their original equipment, are now basically irrelevant. Land(twisted pair copper) lines ar
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Like having the government take over the parts of the industry that are inherently monopolistic (ie. wires; the barrier to entry for that essentially amounts to putting your own set of wires around the entire country) and having them rent out those wires to ISPs, who would then become competitive?
You realize that the only reason that the wires are "inherently monopolistic" is because of governmental interference, right? Your local government signs "franchise agreements" that give a single cable and/or telco company exclusive rights to service your town. Even if you had the capital to lay your own wires you are prohibited by law from doing so.
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You realize that the only reason that the wires are "inherently monopolistic" is because of governmental interference, right?
Well, you're ignoring half the picture. If there were no regulations at all, then anyone with the money to do so would be building poles or digging up right-of-way through our main thoroughfares, breaking other companies' connections all along the way and interrupting your daily commute to work.
The only thing that would limit this would be the money factor, which is actually the main reason that natural monopolies exist. It takes a lot of money to build a railroad, to build a phone network, to build ga
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Did I suggest having "no regulations at all"? I merely pointed out the fact that local governments sign franchise agreements that grant monopoly status backed by law. You are implying that I was advocating for anarchy, which could not be further from the truth.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but it seems to me that it wouldn't be overly disruptive to my daily commute to allow a fourth company to string wires along the telephone poles that already exist in my town. Why should three companies (th
Re:More government encroachment (Score:5, Insightful)
Just what we need, a government takeover of another entire industry.
What's up with people saying this? Look around, especially to wall street and the gulf of mexico. I see industry messing up on the exact same scale or bigger than the government messes up.
I'm not saying "Some companies have messed up so lets give it all over to the government," I'm just saying "Government takes over an industry" isn't as scary to me as it once was.
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What's up with people saying this? Look around, especially to wall street and the gulf of mexico.
wall street was largely because of the government(dot com bubble collapsed, what's the response? to try to reinflate the bubble. Housing bubble collapses, whats the response? to try and reinflate the bubble. We're going to go through another crash). the oil spill sucks, and shit does happen, but who's gonna pay for it? the company that spilled it. And Likely no one will die. There will be some damage, it's
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who's gonna pay for it? the company that spilled it
And they will, which will in turn decrease their profit margins which will be unacceptable for shareholders. That, along with the "decrease" in oil availability because of the spill will result in higher gas prices for a while.
With large scale problems such as this, we can't be blind for the fact of who really foots the bill. Regardless of if governments or corporations front the money, you and I always end up providing the cash.
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More faceless monstrosities (Score:2)
Governments running monopolies SUCK. Megacorporations running monopolies SUCK. That's because MONOPOLIES SUCK, period. Government corruption or megacorporate greed: neither is any better than the other.
But you know what sucks with an unholy vengeance? A corruptocracy composed of government, bureacracy, and megacorporations all COLLUDING TOGETHER. And it can't ever be broken except by revolution. Let's just hope we have a comparatively peaceful revolution like the breakup of the USSR. Oh wait ... the
Re:More government encroachment (Score:5, Insightful)
Just what we need, the government to regulate safety standards on off-shore oil rigs. Just what we need, the government to regulate the largest banks. Just what we need, the government to regulate environmental rules and protect wetlands.
You're fucking A-right.
Just what we need, for Comcast to turn the Internet into the Disney/TimeWarner Channel.
When the federal government was building the Internet, were you saying, "Just what we need, a fast open data network that anyone can connect to".
If you had waited for AT&T to build the Internet, you'd still be waiting. And I guarantee, that whatever they had built wouldn't have allowed for political blogs and bittorrent trackers and news aggregators and open source HTML standards. No YouTube. No Slashdot. And no teabaggers (well, I guess there would be some good points).
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And furthermore... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, we don't have to guess at what the broadband carriers would have built had they been entrusted to create the Internet, because they already have done it.
It's called "cable television".
Those of you who are old enough can remember that when the internet was still Darpanet, the big telcos and media companies were telling us how "cable television" was going to revolutionize communications. It was going to be small-d democratic, with tons of opportunities for local programming and public access.
And what did we get? Spike. And fucking infomercials out the ass. And some very expensive programs (with commercials no less) and lots of reruns. For this, they were given the right to public lands and the right to gouge customers. And we got "pay television" where you have to pay to watch the baseball game you used to watch for free. And monopolies. Don't forget monopolies.
The "free market" and "competition" had their shot at the internet, and they gave you cable fucking television.
We did get RSN's and out of market sports packs ou (Score:2)
We did get RSN's and out of market sports packs out of cable and sat tv.
But the RSN's Idea did get start with the OTA pay channels right before cable go going.
If you are in Chicago check out CSN CHI to see the way to do local sports! CSN CHI get's better ratings then VS and other networks. Yes putting the Blackhawks back on CSN and WGN trun them for no one going to games to sell outs and big time TV ratings.
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Reasonable regulation where it's due.
Not taking over entire industries, though.
Competition is what drives quality of product in other segments of the economy.
There is not sufficient competition in internet service though, even with the available choices of dialup, DSL, cable, fios in some locations, several cellphone companies, satellite and terrestrial wireless.
With all those choices, why isn't competition driving prices down and quality up, like in other industries?
My guess is that there is already too mu
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Oh, and "teabaggers?"
Why the homophobic language?
Whoosh [wikipedia.org].
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I've often thought how thankful I am that the spark of human inter-connectivity came from academia and government rather than private industry. It's clear now, and will become more clear in the coming century, how we dodged a bullet by making the internet an open medium.
Free as in speech (Score:2)
It's a noble idea to get unfettered, free access to everyone, but if you want to keep business in the loop, you're either going to get extremely draconian with laws and enforcement or you'll have to give up trying to police them altogether.
Free Internet access isn't the big deal here as far as I'm concerned. Libraries provide free Internet access, and while like you say the internet isn't needed, neither are books technically speaking. Having information available for free is a good thing. It's just not
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Chris, I'm afraid your arguments are casting pearls before swine.
You can reach a point where some peoples' heads are so filled with free-market talking points that they just can't see the monitor in front of their face.
If we let Comcast and AT&T decide what the internet is going to become, the one technological advance that has actually brought to reality the hopes and foresight that I read about in science fiction way back whe
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You can reach a point where some peoples' heads are so filled with free-market talking points that they just can't see the monitor in front of their face.
that's because the monitor was provided by the free market. And people love to over look all the good things they have because of the free market.
If we let Comcast and AT&T decide what the internet is going to become, the one technological advance that has actually brought to reality the hopes and foresight that I read about in science fiction way bac
Re:Free as in speech (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with the basic principle, but you're overlooking the fact that the telecom industry is NOT a free market and hasn't been for over 100 years. They have been granted monopoly status by government action. That's exactly the opposite of a free market. Cable TV has never been a free market. There is no competition that is legally allowed to come in and fight back. The only hope of any competition is wireless, but they can't compete with the raw speed a wired line can. And the entrenched monopolies can just lower prices and push speeds up to force new competition out of business. With protected monopoly profits no less.
In this industry, there is no freedom, no free market. Even removing the laws preventing competition isn't enough in this case. The existing companies also got huge subsidies and tax breaks to pay for the networks. Can you think of a business plan that can compete with that?
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So you agree that government interfering is a problem.. but you think more government intervention is the solution?
Wireless is a huge competitor. Why would someone buy the internet at home, if they can get it on their phone? assuming they do little else beyond email/occasional web browsing. it's not what I want(mostly cus of gaming habbits), but i also have options.
There's so much money to be made.. people won't just sit back and say, comcast is censoring and fucking their customers, I'm gonna sit back an
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> If we let Comcast and AT&T decide what the internet is going to become...
Yes, letting Comcast or AT&T decide the fate of the net would be a disaster. So would letting the government decide. Putting that decision into ANY select group's hand means we get hosed, the only difference is HOW we get hosed by WHO. Don't know about you but I don't like getting hosed. So why not pick a course of action that doesn't involve getting hosed?
> You can reach a point where some peoples' heads are so fil
Re:Announcing your intent to circumvent the law? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing illegal about circumventing the law. That's why it's called "circumventing", and not "breaking". The court is reminding the FCC that there are limits on their power, the FCC is working within those limits. Provided that you agree with the limits that the court gave the FCC, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this.
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There's nothing illegal about circumventing the law. That's why it's called "circumventing", and not "breaking".
Which is a nice indication of the system being broken.
It's about time they fell under title II (Score:3, Insightful)
Provided that you agree with the limits that the court gave the FCC, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this.
Actually, unless the GP seized power in a coup none of us were aware of, their agreement or disagreement with the court's decision (and underlying law) is immaterial. The court explicitly noted that the FCC is perfectly within its rights to determine ISPs are subject to title II and regulate accordingly, thus bringing into action net neutrality.
Which is what they should have been all along: com
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by blood or by words if necessary. that is as important as any independence struggle in the history of universe.
Says the pasty armchair general from his parents' basement.
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And whose country is "his" country referring to? Would that be you? If so, you should really watch a little more Seinfeld so you could use the 'third person' self-reference properly as in "George's country!".
his country is usa. my country is turkey.
and i dont give a shit about grammar or creative writing as long as the person who takes the time to read understands what i say.
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Yes, that's exactly what the activist judges on the federal court said.
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Or more precisely, 'bought and paid for' judges.
Re:in other words (Score:5, Insightful)
Um. No, the judges correctly noted that it was the FCC that was saying "fuck the law," by making up their own laws.
Do you really want federal judges who are going to allow federal agencies to do whatever they want, even when the law says they can't? That's scary stuff.
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Do you really want federal judges who are going to allow federal agencies to do whatever they want, even when the law says they can't?
The problem the FCC had wasn't that the law said they can't enforce net neutrality. The problem was that their prior interpretations (i.e., the laws they made up previously, in their rule and order Computer II [cybertelecom.org].) are inconsistent with what they want to do now.
Re:in other words (Score:4, Informative)
The problem the FCC had wasn't that the law said they can't enforce net neutrality.
It's that the law says the FCC can't write new laws, and this was, in effect, a new law. From the ruling:
The FCC must be able to point where in a law, passed by Congress, they have the authority to do this. They failed to do so. They can't make up a new law on their own. It's basically that simple.
Re:in other words (Score:5, Insightful)
Through the Communications Act of 1934 as amended over the decades Congress has given the Commission express and expansive authority to regulate common carrier services, including landline telephony; radio transmissions, including broadcast television, radio, and cellular telephony; and “cable services,” including cable television. In this case, the Commission does not claim that Congress has given it express authority to regulate Comcast’s Internet service. Indeed, in its still-binding 2002 Cable Modem Order, the Commission ruled that cable Internet service is neither a “telecommunications service” covered by Title II of the Communications Act nor a “cable service” covered by Title VI. The Commission therefore rests its assertion of authority over Comcast’s network management practices on the broad language of section 4(i) of the Act [which the courts have come to call ancillary jurisdiction] [citations omitted]
Yes, the DC Cir. ruled that the FCC didn't have ancillary jurisdiction. But way up at the top of the opinion is the bit quoted above, where the court recognizes that this issue is raised because the FCC determined, in a still binding order, that internet service was not a telecom service, which it can regulate under title II, common carriage.
If the FCC determines that internet access is a telecom service - which they have the authority to do - then it can enforce net neutrality using its normal common carriage authority. No new laws from Congress required.
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If the FCC determines that internet access is a telecom service - which they have the authority to do - then it can enforce net neutrality using its normal common carriage authority. No new laws from Congress required.
That's unlikely. It would cause a lot of practical problems (which is the reason it changed in the first place ... to change it back just for Net Neutrality is short-sighted), and the change itself could be challenged on various grounds.
And why bother? We have a process for doing this: it's called "Congress." :-)
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Under your logic perhaps the FDA should declare the Internet a drug so it can regulate it.
Heck it is the Information Superhighway, perhaps we should get someone from our local law enforcement community to regulate it.
Perhaps we should contact NASA and have them draft an exploratory counsel given it is often referred to as cyberSPACE.
I hate many things about ISPs, but I hate the ide
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Perhaps I should remind you that we live in a Democratic Republic where only elected representatives are to make the laws, not government agencies.
Allow me to introduce you to administrative law [wikipedia.org]. I think you'll get a real kick out of agency rulemaking [wikipedia.org].
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They can't make up a new law on their own. It's basically that simple.
If only that were true. All government agencies legislate through creating rules. Many of the freedoms we have lost have come about through bureaucratic rules.
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Hey, I never thought of that! I'll dump Comcast and choose another ISP from this list of ISPs that serve my area:
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So start your own cable company to compete with them.
...oh wait, your local government won't allow you to do that, because it gave Comcast exclusive rights to service your town. Never mind.....
Comcast needs to give up CSN Philly to sat tv! NBC (Score:2)
Comcast needs to give up CSN Philly to sat tv! If not then Comcsat may buy NBC and try to make it cable only. Just think if CSN Chi was not 80% team / 20% comcast owned then it very well of been comcast only like cltv was comcast only for a long time but at least CSN + that was on CLTV and MOJO HD was on all other systems and sat tv as well.