U.S. Appeals Court kills net neutrality

[Satan]

U.S. appeals court kills net neutrality
BGR.com
By Brad Reed 5 hours ago


Any semblance of net neutrality in the United States is as good as dead. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Tuesday struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s 2010 order that imposed network neutrality regulations on wireline broadband services. The ruling is a major victory for telecom and cable companies who have fought all net neutrality restrictions vociferously for years.

The original FCC order said that wireline ISPs ”shall not block lawful content, applications, services or non-harmful devices, subject to reasonable network management” while also mandating that ISPs “shall not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful traffic over a consumer’s broadband Internet access service.”

In its ruling against the FCC’s rules, the court said that such restrictions are not needed in part because consumers have a choice in which ISP they use.

“Without broadband provider market power, consumers, of course, have options,” the court writes. “They can go to another broadband provider if they want to reach particular edge providers or if their connections to particular edge providers have been degraded.”

[Satan]

Whomever did the "research" for these hack judges is either a fucking idiot, or a goddamned liar (or both).

90% of the US has NO choice in broadband providers. A small percentage of others have the "choice" of cable broadband and DSL which is barely faster than dial-up, and completely unsuitable for any sort of audio or video streaming.

There are two agendas which benefit from this dragonshit. Greed being the most obvious. Censoring liberal information in favor of corporate backed right wing propaganda is the other.

[Satan]

Court Strikes Down FCC Open Internet Order
January 14, 2014
Contact Info:

Jenn Topper, 202-265-1490 ext. 35

WASHINGTON -- On Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet Order. In its decision, the court said that the FCC lacked the authority to implement and enforce its rules under the legal framework the agency put forth.

The FCC’s 2010 order was intended to prevent broadband Internet access providers from blocking or interfering with traffic on the Web. Instead of reversing a Bush-era FCC decision that weakened the FCC’s authority over broadband, and establishing solid legal footing for its rules, former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski pushed for rules under the complicated legal framework the court rejected today.

Free Press President and CEO Craig Aaron made the following statement:

“We’re disappointed that the court came to this conclusion. Its ruling means that Internet users will be pitted against the biggest phone and cable companies — and in the absence of any oversight, these companies can now block and discriminate against their customers’ communications at will.

“The compromised Open Internet Order struck down today left much to be desired, but it was a step toward maintaining Internet users’ freedom to go where they wanted, when they wanted, and communicate freely online. Now, just as Verizon promised it would in court, the biggest broadband providers will race to turn the open and vibrant Web into something that looks like cable TV. They’ll establish fast lanes for the few giant companies that can afford to pay exorbitant tolls and reserve the slow lanes for everyone else.

“The FCC — under the leadership of former Chairman Julius Genachowski — made a grave mistake when it failed to ground its open Internet rules on solid legal footing. Internet users will pay dearly for the previous chairman’s lack of political will. That’s why we need to fix the problems the agency could have avoided in the first place.

“New FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler recently stated that the FCC must have the ability to protect broadband users and preserve the Internet’s fundamental open architecture. In order to do that, he must act quickly to restore and reassert the FCC’s clear authority over our nation’s communications infrastructure. The agency must follow its statutory mandate to make broadband communications networks open, accessible, reliable and affordable for everyone.

“We look forward to working with Chairman Wheeler and the rest of the Commission to protect and preserve real Net Neutrality.”

http://www.freepress.net/node/105543

http://act.freepress.net/sign/internet_FCC_court_decision2/?source=slider%3Fsource%3Dwebsite_node_feature

[Nickdfresh]

This blows massive cock!

[neuralfraud]

You're damn right this blows massive cock. Net neutrality was one of the things the FCC did right.

There simply aren't enough consumers (in my opinion) that truly care about the quality of their bandwidth to make even a small dent in a would-be greed driven ISP's bottom line. In fact, they'll probably save money in the longrun.

I could be wrong of course, but this could also turn into a situation where we have much cheaper "basic broadband" and more expensive "premium broadband" options which could ...possibly be a good thing as it may lower the cost for a majority of consumers while those who want to be torrenting shit all day long might just be fine with paying for a more expensive option.

It's tough to cast judgment right away, however you can't deny the fact that the ISP's will be considering the potential impact of pissing off a small majority of their customers to save money.

Of course the original idea surely was to prevent egregious mangling of service for all but the most trivial of protocols. Hell.. I have bright house cable and my plan is a "basic" 30Mbps/1.5Mbps yet it's damn near impossible to play games such as unreal tournament (the original 1999 game) without severe lag spikes upwards of 250ms ... that's entering dialup territory! Any educated geek will know bandwidth does not necessarily translate into latency. If I had just 1 megabit that would be more than sufficient to enjoy any online game. Latency comes from the network - Quality Of Service, number of hops between you and the destination and other shit that they do to prioritize specific types of traffic and to me, it seems UDP traffic much like the kind that online games utilize is at the bottom of the fucking totem pole and they use that to advertise their "Lightning 90" for "gamers".

REally? since when do I need *NINETY MEGABITS* to play a fucking game that on a busy server might take 20 KILOBITS? You don't. That's the fucking truth. You do need it though if you want your ISP to process those packets with a little more "priority", so basically as far as I'm concerned they've already been crippling the internet for most consumers and this changes nothing except now they have a legal judgment that practically grants them carte blanche to take it to the next level of absurdity.

I suppose in an extreme world, we would have plans that might only allow traffic to web sites.

Let's wait and see

[Blaze]

Let's wait and see

Hmm, "Let's wait and see" was a really such good idea with the Military Industrial Complex that it will be a great idea with Net Neutrality. That is good and proper thinking, plus just a good idea!

[Satan]

[neuralfraud]

Hmm ...yes. netflix filling those pipes and making all the money = pissed off verizon. That's exactly why they only have one service plan for all customers - A BILLION BITS!! Wait.. no ...that's not right.
Starting with their "most popular plans" we have:
15/5 $49.99/mo
50/25 $59.99/mo
75/35 $69.99/mo

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! That's right! because if 75 /35 is just not good enough for you, then they have the following QUANTUM plans (in limited areas)
150/65 for $129.99/mo
300/65 for $209.99/mo
500/100 for $299.99/mo

So somewhere, out there in the wide world of sports there are people willing to pay up to $300 a month to get this ridiculous amount of bandwidth, not even seen in most corporate IT infrastructures (in fact, where I work, the big 3 letter acronym that EVERYONE proudly displays on the back windshield of their car) we have a 50megabit pipe that is "burstable" to 100mbit. that's right. Some jabrone in his mommy's basement has more bandwidth than a huge corporate IT department.

So no, I do not believe for one second that Verizon is in any way "pissed" about losing out on the money netflix is making.

Now, for the argument of interfering with a service provider in order for the ISP to promote their own, competitive service? well, I can see that coming down to existing anti-competition law although it could take years for such a case to be presided over and by that time, in theory, the damage could be done.

I would not be suprised though to see the RIAA/MPAA cronies crawling up Big ISP's ass(es) in order to kill bittorrent/magnet traffic but then again, see my first argument. If customers want 500mbits of bandwidth, they can pay for it and get it.

Third, blocking sites for political reasons sounds like something that might happen ...in China.

My argument is not for or against net neutrality or the ISP's, but remember way back when comcast was caught fucking with their customer's service? What happened? People revolted. Now suddenly out of nowhere comes this decision? seems like a case of "let's see how good their memory is".

I prefer to not have to leave it to the government to force a company into leaving its service open and neutral for all parties and I have to hope that there are enough people who wont stand for such behavior and will in fact take their money elsewhere, forcing that company to respond appropriately.

It's a shame that it had to come down to the FCC to decide in the first place... that an ISP (comcast) actually thought that it would be a good idea to interfere with the traffic. Hence my "let's wait and see" stance ..

1] If net neutrality becomes law and remains law, then ISPs can simply change their plans and pricing to get what they want
2] if there is no net neutrality, then ISPs can do whatever they want, perhaps they will unveil cheap "basic" tier plans for the masses, saving the bandwidth for the power users who want to pirate blu-ray rips and run game servers, etc.

There are positives on both sides of the fence, as well as negatives. Net neutrality practically ensures that all content is treated fairly, that doesn't mean that for a given tier, an ISP won't simply make all content treated "poorly". Again, want to play that game with low latency? Then you need 90MEGA BITS!! Suprisingly, it seems to work because there's alot of people out there who enjoy online gaming. As a customer of both Verizon and Bright house, I'll admit that Verizon delivered far better performance where latency was a deciding factor in my enjoyment of a particular service. I eventually switched to RoadRunner Lightning (when it was 40/10) and my 20-25ms average ping turned into 50-75ms!

Basically, right now it's far easier for an ISP to lower priority across the board (being fair) for a given tier than it is for that ISP to go through the lengths detailed by Mr. Uygur and I wouldn't be surprised at all if I called bright house, said "I want Lightning 90" and watched my ping cut in half while I play UT as they make the change to my service...but I also don't want to spend that kind of money right now, so I don't and I live with that. It sucks, but it could be worse.

I'm just incoherently babbling at this point..

TL;DR: *shrug*

[Redballjets88]

If you're going to say this is a victory for corporate greed you're wrong. It's a victory for economic freedom and the right for ISPs to compete with one another without the government telling them what is equal and neutral. For example, what happens when the hospital can no longer pay for quicker and better service? Will grandma have to be delayed in surgery because the Care Bears demand equal service? The market will weed these problems out. Once you get government and the FCC involved then you get a pretty little marriage of government and corporations that is the worst of evils. In the end the intentions are great but will inevitably blow up like most anything else the government attempts to fix/correct/regulate/or equalize

[FORD]

Geezus RedBalls..... I thought you had learned something since you first started posting here as a dumb teenager all those years ago.

Maybe I overestimated you?

[Redballjets88]

What credibility has the FCC ever shown when it comes to anything

[Redballjets88]

If it makes it up to you I don't like the trans pacific agreement

[FORD]

What credibility has the FCC ever shown when it comes to anything

The FCC was doing just fine with it until the Chimp appointed Mikey Powell to run it, who by his own admission, knew NOTHING about the FCC or what their responsibilities were, let alone the purpose of the internet, before being put in charge of it.

The Internet - just like the public airwaves - is a common carrier and should be equally accessible to all. Ultimately, something needs to be done about these "virtual" monopolies, because despite what this sadly misinformed judge believes (and apparently what you believe) there is little or usually NO choice in internet providers. As long as you're forced to pay those thieving bastards at Comcast/TimeWarner/Cox/insert your local monopoly here, you should, at the very least, be able to access every last website on the net for that $65 those assholes are stealing from you every month. But with net neutrality gone, they can bundle websites like they do TV channels. And we all know how well that works.

BTW, whatever happened to McCain's ala-carte TV bill anyway?

[FORD]

If it makes it up to you I don't like the trans pacific agreement

That's good to hear..... but some of the same greedy media corporations are behind both.

[Redballjets88]

I don't know what happened to that idea McCain had. I thought it was utterly stupid.