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Network AT&T Businesses Communications The Courts The Internet United States

Cable Companies Urge Judges To Kill 'Net Neutrality' Rules 170

An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: Trade associations representing wireless, cable and broadband operators on Friday urged the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reverse...the Federal Communications Commission's so-called net neutrality rules, put in place last year to make internet service providers treat all internet traffic equally...

The cable groups said the court should correct "serious errors" in a decision "that radically reshapes federal law governing a massive sector of the economy, which flourished due to hundreds of billions of dollars of investment made in reliance on the policy the order throws overboard".. In its filing on Friday, the CTIA said it was illegal to subject broadband internet access to "public-utility style, common carrier regulation" and illegal to impose "common-carrier status on mobile broadband."

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said he wasn't surprised to see "the big dogs" challenging net neutrality.

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Cable Companies Urge Judges To Kill 'Net Neutrality' Rules

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  • If I was a judge and someone was trying to change a law that prevents extortion and other organized crime style corruption, I'd fine them and kick them out of the courtroom. But maybe this judge takes bribes.

    • by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Sunday July 31, 2016 @02:47PM (#52617169) Journal

      On the other hand, one would like elected officials to pass a law changing the status of such a massive thing, and not just do something Congress did not envision with that law. This is a massive sector for unelected officials to rewrite.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        This is a massive sector for unelected officials to rewrite.

        It needs to be rewritten. It's past time to turn the internet (into a dumb pipe) and even cellular service into a public utility, just like the land line. If Congress won't do it, the courts must. And if they don't, we need to put the initiative on the ballot. We endure lousy service only because of public apathy.

        • by Obfuscant ( 592200 ) on Sunday July 31, 2016 @04:15PM (#52617449)

          If Congress won't do it, the courts must.

          The courts are not supposed to be in the business of writing law. That means if Congress won't do it, the courts have even less business doing it.

          And if they don't, we need to put the initiative on the ballot.

          You wish for a patchwork of internet regulation on a state-by-state basis? What a minefield that would be.

          • by mishehu ( 712452 )

            If Congress won't do it, the courts must.

            The courts are not supposed to be in the business of writing law. That means if Congress won't do it, the courts have even less business doing it.

            Playing semantics is pointless. By interpreting the law, the courts essentially write it. It's simply a different process, and they don't write new, original laws, only taking in ones that already exist.

            And if they don't, we need to put the initiative on the ballot.

            You wish for a patchwork of internet regulation on a state-by-state basis? What a minefield that would be.

            Where does he say that it should be a on state-by-state basis?

            • by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Sunday July 31, 2016 @05:46PM (#52617727)
              There is no process for putting an initiative on the ballot at a federal level, but many for doing that at a state level. So the comment about putting initiatives on the ballot must be about doing it at a state-level.
              • by mishehu ( 712452 )
                Or perhaps it's just a figure of speech meaning "make enough noise to get the federal legislature to do something about it" ? I don't know, and I don't feel like assuming what the original poster meant by it.
                • Or perhaps it's just a figure of speech meaning "make enough noise to get the federal legislature to do something about it" ?

                  No. There is no federal initiative process, and NO BALLOT TO PUT IT ON. Here in the USA we do not have a true national election. The highest level election (and thus "ballot") is the state level. All the gum flapping you read in your papers about the "winner" of the "popular vote" for President (the only national elected office now that Pres and VP are combined) is just gum flapping. There are state elections which result state winners, and a process to select the final winner from that. "Adding up all the

          • If Congress won't do it, the courts must.

            The courts are not supposed to be in the business of writing law. That means if Congress won't do it, the courts have even less business doing it.

            And if they don't, we need to put the initiative on the ballot.

            You wish for a patchwork of internet regulation on a state-by-state basis? What a minefield that would be.

            If Congress won't do it, the courts must.

            The courts are not supposed to be in the business of writing law. That means if Congress won't do it, the courts have even less business doing it.

            And if they don't, we need to put the initiative on the ballot.

            You wish for a patchwork of internet regulation on a state-by-state basis? What a minefield that would be.

            I dont mind if the government does allow the law to be struck down but only if and only if the government puts in an alternative IP Highway. The government provides interstate transportation, it should provide communication transportation.

            My province, (Quebec) nationalized the distribution and generation of electricity. It was done so that remote areas could get electricity at the same cost as city dwellers. Today, we have one of the cheapest electricity rates in North America. I wish they would do the sam

        • This is a massive sector for unelected officials to rewrite.

          It needs to be rewritten. It's past time to turn the internet (into a dumb pipe) and even cellular service into a public utility, just like the land line. If Congress won't do it, the courts must. And if they don't, we need to put the initiative on the ballot. We endure lousy service only because of public apathy.

          I flew in the era when airlines were regulated. Fares, routes, it was all controlled by the federal government, and guess what? It cost a fortune to fly anywhere. Sure, it was great that my employer-paid seat was on a half-populated plane where I could stretch out on the seats, but if I were going somewhere on my own dime, I'd either be driving or Greyhounding it, because I couldn't afford the 'luxury' of flying. Those were also the days pre-Carterfone decision where it was illegal to attach your own device

          • by Anonymous Coward

            It cost a fortune to fly anywhere.

            At least you knew when you purchased the ticket what the price was. Now there are so many hidden fees that most people have no idea how much a trip is actually going to cost. And some of the pricing is still designed to rip people off, a trip from California to Osaka Japan costs LESS then a trip to Houston Texas. And I remember reading on Slashdot about some trick where you could buy a ticket to a destination with a layover where you actually wanted to go and then not bother to re-board the plane and it wou

        • Congress created laws for this already, and the President issued an executive order creating the FCC to enact those laws. By not acting, Congress is stating their position on the matter: the FCC was created to decide how this works, and Congress sees no need to intervene.

      • by AK Marc ( 707885 )
        The law was passed in 1996. The FCC thinks the law gives them some powers, those who would lose their ability to hold customers hostage disagree. The law is sufficiently vague that it appears the FCC has the powers. The law was sufficiently vague so that the regulations would have force of law, and the FCC would have the flexibility to react to the industry, without having to go back to Congress every year with pules of laws needed to keep up. That was by design. If you are against "activist judges" re
      • Actually, this is exactly what the law was intended for. ISPs have been common carriers (in function) ever since the internet became a staple, rather than a novelty, in the average American life. They managed to keep this change at bay for a while, despite their deployments being almost entirely subsidized by federal, state, and local funding and frequently claiming protection under Title II (guess which title "common carrier" falls under?) in order to make their installations easier. Furthermore, at this p
      • Cable types hate Net Neutrality? My nipples are so sensitive, excuse my rubbing of them. Now, Net Neutrality means that Cable companies can't rip the community off? Oh, my nipples, they seem to need more rubbing. Maybe the Cable companies should sell off their Internet interest? Oh god; my nipples are just longing for more rubbing. Apologies to South Park
  • comcast wants you to buy HBO with cable tv and not just HSI + HBO GO.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31, 2016 @03:06PM (#52617219)

      Look no further than Canada to see what a lack of net neutrality looks like
      1) Expensive (minimum $85 to get ANY internet service)
      2) Unbundled packages save you nothing
      3) To get things like HBO, you have to spend over $100 in package bundles
      4) Each carrier has their own garbage-tier VOD service that only has the last 1 or 2 episodes, and sometimes not even that if it's a childrens show. This is because they came with their own Netflix-clones for watching entire seasons of the exact same VOD material.
      5) And if you switch carriers, you have to pay for data on top of the subscription cost to use those netflix-clones.

      Basically the Canadian carriers are trying to "kill netflix" by using the bandwidth caps against it's users and then go "but you can use Shomi if you use Rogers/Shaw, or Crave if you use Bell/Telus for only another $10 per month" when you can pay an extra $15 and just get the unmetered package.

      The requirement, should be: The Cable, Telephone, and Fiber networks shall only be a "dumb pipe", any content can go over it. The congestion controls should be set at the switching points, not the ISP. If a neighborhood is "saturated" then that neighborhood is checked for who is using a disproportionate amount of bandwidth, sent a "speeding ticket" that tells them they will be downgraded to 8Mbits until they explain how they are using that bandwidth.

      • Look no further than Canada to see what a lack of net neutrality looks like 1) Expensive (minimum $85 to get ANY internet service)

        Has nothing to do with net neutrality.

        2) Unbundled packages save you nothing

        Also not net neutrality.

        3) To get things like HBO, you have to spend over $100 in package bundles

        You are batting 0.000 for net neutrality issues so far.

        4) Each carrier has their own garbage-tier VOD service

        Comcast OnDemand isn't an internet service, it's a cable TV service. Not net neutrality.

        5) And if you switch carriers, you have to pay for data on top of the subscription cost to use those netflix-clones.

        Uhh, what? You have to pay for data to get data? I'm at a loss what you're talking about here.

        The requirement, should be: The Cable, Telephone, and Fiber networks shall only be a "dumb pipe", any content can go over it.

        How is paying Rogers for Shomi different than paying Netflix for Netflix, and what does it have to do with "any content can go over it?"

        The congestion controls should be set at the switching points, not the ISP.

        Uhhh, so an ISP cannot ever allow any congestion within their own switching n

        • by Ramze ( 640788 )

          VOD is actually a sticking point with ISPs and the FCC.

          Modern cable systems are digital, and they push content... so a video on demand service from a cable service is extremely similar to any other video on demand service -- like Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon. The FCC has warned ISPs not to degrade the quality of other VOD services to favor their own, but they can provide their own for free or for a fee to compete with others.

          The sticking point is net metering -- should cable companies be allowed to exclude the

          • so a video on demand service from a cable service is extremely similar to any other video on demand service -- like Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon.

            Except Comcast's isn't. It is delivered like a regular cable channel, encrypted, and the STB is instructed to tune to that channel. It's isn't a dedicated data stream. In fact, before they started encrypting those feeds, it was quite fun to use a digital tuner to scan for any OnDemand and watch along with your neighbors. It was great. They would skip the ads for you, and rewind to rewatch the interesting bits.

            Different delivery system, different part of the available bandwidth.

            Some say it should be excluded because it is on the cable company's network and they don't have to pay a fee to pull it over an internet connection.

            1. For Comcast, it isn't data

  • News at 11: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Type44Q ( 1233630 ) on Sunday July 31, 2016 @02:41PM (#52617139)

    News at 11: Liars lie.

  • Common Carrier (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jasnw ( 1913892 ) on Sunday July 31, 2016 @02:53PM (#52617181)
    It would serve them right if the court just turned around and declared that cable and internet service providers are all in the category of "common carriers" and should be regulated and controlled as such. Bazinga.
    • It would serve them right if the court just turned around and declared that cable and internet service providers are all in the category of "common carriers" and should be regulated and controlled as such. Bazinga.

      Cable television certainly isn't a common carrier. Not even close. It is a video distribution system. One way.

      • Their video distribution service may be one way, but the ISP side of their house certainly isn't.

        It's also not a separate company from the one who provides you your internet.

        Thus, unless they spin the business off into it's own subsidiary, they would find themselves attached at the hip to the regulated side of the business.

        Something they wouldn't care much for.

        However, breaking off has its own issues as well. Like not getting a free ride across those Comcast owned data pipes.

      • by Ramze ( 640788 )

        Common carrier has nothing to do with whether something is unidirectional, bidirectional, or omnidirectional.

        Any service that allows anyone to pay a fee to have their goods &/or services picked up from one location and delivered to another is a common carrier. Airlines, telephone companies, electric companies, freight and railway companies, and internet service providers are all common carriers... because they "carry" a thing from A to B for a fee -- generally from any random member of the public.

        T

        • You are correct that Cable TV is not a common carrier... mostly. The FCC does require cable TV providers to carry broadcast TV stations within their respective areas (with some restrictions)

          When I say "common carrier" in this context, I mean "should be treated under the law as a common carrier". And that "some restrictions" is a pretty big one. They aren't required to carry broadcast stations unless the station demands it. Most stations have found out it is financially better for them to demand payment for carriage instead of using must-carry. I'm sure there are some small independents that still demand must-carry, but the major broadcasters don't.

          The key being they don't just broadcast whatever any random person wants for fee. They could, but it'd be a nightmare for scheduling, payment, censorship, etc.

          Many cable systems have what's called PEG -- p

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Throttling baby!

    I don't mind it, I'll throttle my bills too.

    From month to month I'll change my service tier, fry "your" modem, and pay the bill in anywhere from 0.05 to 0.25 increments, by cheque, by mail.

    I'll complain that the internet is slow on X networks, and I'll hapilly post my speed test results. Good luck maintaining your "fastest in X" category.

    For heavy downloading, that is where the Microsoft store, and apple store come in. I'll hapilly use your bandwidth, sure, I'll purchase a 20.00 mouse, and t

  • by PvtVoid ( 1252388 ) on Sunday July 31, 2016 @02:57PM (#52617191)

    Never mind that nothing fits the definition of "common carrier" better than a service which sends packets over the inter-tubes. If the Cable Co's want to argue in court that they aren't common carriers, that is terribly dangerous for them: it sets a precedent that means that they are not afforded the protections given common carriers under the law, most important immunity from prosecution for transmission of illegal content.

    Careful what you wish for, Comcast.

    • by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Sunday July 31, 2016 @03:37PM (#52617313) Journal

      One of the reasons they don't want to be a public utility is that they want those censorship powers. If they had their way, all you would get is Facebook and Amazon.

      • One of the reasons they don't want to be a public utility is that they want those censorship powers. If they had their way, all you would get is Facebook and Amazon.

        Uh, they are a US capitalist company. Therefore, all they "want" is to secure revenue. If they had their way, you would get billed separately for your Facebook and Amazon "channels".

    • by Zocalo ( 252965 )
      Yeah, that argument keeps coming up; "Net Neutratility or Common Carrier Status - just pick one already!" Seriously though, if the cable operators were to lose their common carrier status what do you think they'd do? Come down like an anvil on content and install non-optional and over-reaching filters, transparent proxy use and draconian levels of logging across the board, perhaps? Realistically, pretty much anything that will let them produce log files that pass the buck squarely onto the end user when
    • Are you saying they didn't receive protection for transmission of illegal content until they were classified as CC this year? Something doesn't sound right with your argument.

      • Until recently, we might not have had an official explanation for why ISPs don't have strict control over content flowing across their pipes, and so handwaved liability based on common sense. Now, with rules and definitions in place, we have decided that an entity which asserts that it has control over what type of content it delivers must also have *responsibility* for that content.

  • by quax ( 19371 ) on Sunday July 31, 2016 @02:59PM (#52617203)

    "billions of dollars of investment"

    If they spent this much money without taking into account that this legislation could come down the pike they'd be amateurs.

    Of course this is just a smokescreen, they did the math up front. This is still profitable, just not as much as it could be.

    • by Calydor ( 739835 ) on Sunday July 31, 2016 @03:11PM (#52617233)

      Those are the billions of TAX PAYER dollars they were given to build out the infrastructure, but they leave out that little detail.

      • by quax ( 19371 )

        Good point.

      • Further, where have those billions of tax payer dollars gone?

        We have no appreciable competition with other developed countries for overall speed/price parity.
        We don't even have local competition within a municipality, often it's the choice between cable and DSL... Two technologies that, while similar, are not real competition with one another. If anything, DSL's slower overall speed is incentive for cable to slow the F down and match price.
        Over the past 15 years that I recall, speeds have gone from 5
    • Right--the cable ISP business is profitable already, to the tune of an ~90% profit margin. What they're really bitching about here is being blocked from attempting to double-dip and charge two parties for the same bandwidth instead of the current total of one.

  • Well no kidding (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HalAtWork ( 926717 ) on Sunday July 31, 2016 @03:14PM (#52617239)

    Why work to earn loyal customers when you can just tip the scales against your competition?

  • They also asked the Judge for an emergency injunction to require their customers to submit to further sodomy,

  • by rossz ( 67331 ) <ogre&geekbiker,net> on Sunday July 31, 2016 @03:49PM (#52617357) Journal

    Tell them, you have two choices:

    1. You accept common carrier status, net neutrality, and you are not held liable for content you carry.
    2. You are not a common carrier, you can do what you want with traffic, but you take full responsibility for all illegal net traffic.

    Choose wisely.

    • Here's the excluded middle you've ignored: they are allowed to shape traffic as necessary to manage bandwidth and the people who send the illegal content are the ones responsible for it. There can be congestion that slows border traffic which is content agnostic, and having to inspect each packet to make a legality determination will only make it slower.

      I hope you realize that they don't have to inspect the content to be able to prioritize services which need higher QoS and lower latency. A Skype call that

      • by Anonymous Coward

        You are a fucking idiot. I don't say that lightly, but it's necessary.

      • For the ACs who are jumping up and down saying you can't tell what kind of traffic is what ... there are still well known ports for many services. A whole list of them. And even DD-WRT has the ability to set QoS for port ranges etc.

        If you want to hide what kind of traffic you're sending so no QoS can be applied in transit, fine. Accept the congestion that undifferentiated traffic can be subject to.

        As for the yammering about how these awful monopolies ... stop. There is no monopoly for ISP service. None.

        • by fedos ( 150319 )
          Wow, and I thought your first post would be the dumbest thing I read today.
          • I'm truly sorry that you've never heard of QoS related to TCP and the internet, and that you feel compelled to argue based solely on ad hominem.
        • I guess you are not aware of Franchise agreements and why Comcast argued it should be able to purchase Time Warner Cable because they don't compete in the same markets.

          Trolling for the cable companies gets you no where.
          • I guess you are not aware of Franchise agreements

            Yes, I am very familiar with franchise agreements, because I have been on the local cable regulatory commission in two of the localities I've lived in. I've read those franchises, and the franchises of many other municipalities. I've asked multiple time for anyone to point me to an exclusive franchise and nobody has yet been able to show me one. There is a reason for that.

            I guess you are not aware that by federal law franchise agreements are NOT ALLOWED to be exclusive. Some of them were, but the law has p

        • by rossz ( 67331 )

          As for the yammering about how these awful monopolies ... stop. There is no monopoly for ISP service. None.

          What are you smoking? In most areas there is exactly one choice for internet service. Usually the local cable company. A business with a history of some of the shittiest customer service in existence. In other places the only choice is DSL from the local phone company. The world champions in shitty customer service.

      • by Ramze ( 640788 )

        QoS is tedious and nearly impossible to set up and maintain properly and fairly. The easiest and most cost-beneficial way to use it is to favor content and services the ISP/Cable provider offers -- to the detriment of other providers. Also, QoS is basically useless for prioritizing anything over an encrypted VPN... and it's highly dependent on applications being fair and sticking to RFCs. All one has to do is write a program to send their data with a different packet header that lies and says the data

      • by zifn4b ( 1040588 )

        A Skype call that talks about subversive overthrow of the US Government will look no different than a Skype call talking about Aunt Martha's cookie recipe, yet the latter is clearly a violation of several federal laws of patent and DMCA.

        I hear Aunt Martha is on the FBI's top wanted list. She's pretty dangerous. We need to keep a close eye on her.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    ... the internet will be divided into channels. And I'll bet that their Basic Package won't include all of the sites you have access to now.

  • My brother-in-law lives in the usa (Seattle) he pays $80 (iirc) monthly for his internet, he said it was the cheapest. I live in france, for €32, I have a 22Mb/1.4MB VDSL connection along with a €0 euro mobile plan including 2h voice, and unlimited sms per month, and another 17€ with 50GB 4G plan with unlimited voice and sms (along with free roaming up to 3GB per year in a lot of countries including uk, germany, italy and spain). So I don't know what turned bad in usa, but it can't be that pr
    • What percentage of your income do you pay in taxes?

    • My brother-in-law lives in the usa (Seattle) he pays $80 (iirc) monthly for his internet, he said it was the cheapest. I live in france, for €32, I have a 22Mb/1.4MB VDSL connection along with a €0 euro mobile plan including 2h voice, and unlimited sms per month, and another 17€ with 50GB 4G plan with unlimited voice and sms (along with free roaming up to 3GB per year in a lot of countries including uk, germany, italy and spain). So I don't know what turned bad in usa, but it can't be that pricey.

      Pricing for these kinds of services has been comparatively expensive for a very long time now. This is hardly new, and doesn't really depend on the carrier de jour.

    • I pay $80 for 172Mb down and 10Mb up. My mobile phone includes unlimited voice, text messaging, media SMS, and low-speed Internet, along with a few GB of high-speed Internet, but that costs $60 (I could get cheaper).

      Your GDP-per-capita is as shitty as the UK's. Get ~12% more productive over there to catch up to the U.S. For the price I pay for Internet, I could buy 77Mb down and 4.5Mb up in France.

      Even lagging as Europe is now, it won't be long before they catch up. What's holding Europe back relat

  • Tom Wheeler has really proven himself as a regulator.
  • "that radically reshapes federal law governing a massive sector of the economy, which flourished due to hundreds of billions of dollars of investment made in reliance on the policy the order throws overboard"

    Love the subtle implied extortion. Either drop the lawsuit or we'll pull funding. It's a bluff. If they don't continue to build out we'll see fiber deployments continue to eat away at their subscriber base until widespread 5G deployments (years if not decades away) arrive.

    • It was after the FCC decision that the phone company came through and tried selling us 40-1Kmb/s connections. (They had very little sales resistance here.)

  • Serial killers urge judges to stop convicting homicide cases.

  • The problem is AT&T and Comcast are whiny babies. They are dinosaur companies that are still trying to run their mega corporations as if we were still back in the days of Ma Bell and the Cable barons. Welcome to Capitalism friends! The same system that let you thrive when you actually were innovative and competitive is now urging you to evolve to continue to be competitive in the face of new and better services like Google Fiber, Verizon FIOS, Netflix, Hulu, Playstation Vue and you guys can't step up

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