Net neutrality on it's way out?

[Iniquitous]

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/verizon-wins-net-neutrality-loses-court-ruling-opens-door-tiered-2D11922702


Well, here we go. If this isn't overturned we will soon have our carriers telling us what we can and cannot have on our phones/tablets/pcs. Though, honestly, I am not so sure the Supreme Court would overrule this.

[Hades]

Given the ideological make-up of the court, I'm dubious that they would take an anti-business position if the case did get to them.  I mean, this is the court that gave us the Citizens United decision after all.   And not only that, but considering in a recent case (I think the Winsor/DOMA case) it was revealed just how technologically illiterate the justices are, I suspect that there would be exploding brain-bits as they tried to understand all this new-fangled technology.

But yeah, I hope that this is reversed on appeal since I'd rather AT&T not decide what I have easy access to.

[IStateYourName]

The Supreme Court's bought and paid for.  Yet another reason to emigrate from the U.S.

[gaggedLouise]

Yes, really crappy decision. It's easy for anyone to see why the ISPs are eager to get a bigger share of the actual money after they have tried to corner shares of a growing market with (often) deliberately underpriced offers to new subscribers. If you can demand extra cash by the customer for access to Youtube, Facebook or Flickr or "extra large full access" to the net, or from people running smaller sites (like E and a thousand others) for the privilege of being in the same outbound lane as Google and Youtube, why shouldn't you jump on the opportunity?

The internet should remain an open and non-discriminating medium in the same sense that a newspaper or a magazine can (in many countries, including the US) be started and circulated by just about anyone, without any high barriers to the field.

[Neysha]

The Supreme Court's bought and paid for.  Yet another reason to emigrate from the U.S.

Thank you for that.

[Callie Del Noire]

The Supreme Court's bought and paid for.  Yet another reason to emigrate from the U.S.

Do you honestly think the concept of 'Net Neutrality' stops at the US Border? Or that the assault on it will stay within the boundaries of this Country?

[gaggedLouise]

Do you honestly think the concept of 'Net Neutrality' stops at the US Border? Or that the assault on it will stay within the boundaries of this Country?

It's a long-haul struggle for sure. And the day somebody writes a book called A History of the Internet as a Free Medium, or something, this decision and the legal and civic wrangling over it is going to make up a chapter by itself.

I would say the EU has been a bit better than the US at standing up for the idea of civic guarantees of freedom against governments messing with what kind of content, what kind of sites, you're allowed to access. And against companies effectively buying up the means of accessing the web (hey, we fined Microsoft to the tune of hundreds of millions of euros/bucks for monopolizing tactics!). I'm thinking of the union parliament and EU-wide legislation here, not some outlier ideas by national cabinets such as Cameron's "anti-porn wall" project (which could get challenged on a European court level).

The idea of net neutrality is fairly entrenched around here, and I think seeing the web as essentially a public utility, a free-access public medium (even if many of its parts, sites, tech companies, ISPs, platform software etc are often run by private holders) and not a privatized entertainment park has become the dominant view. So far...

[IStateYourName]

Do you honestly think the concept of 'Net Neutrality' stops at the US Border? Or that the assault on it will stay within the boundaries of this Country?

Most other countries are not corporate quislings like the United States.

[kylie]

Most other countries are not corporate quislings like the United States.

        I tend to put it like this:  In the US, the corporations are starting to own the government (if they didn't always).  In China, the government owns the corporations.  You can get squeezed in either case, and arguably some big wigs get the lion's share either way.  It's a small difference perhaps, but a notable one to me.  Anyway, there are days E loads just fine...  And then there are the days I have to turn on the proxies or VPN.  I'm not sure that's censors playing with the channels so much as dubious connections, but it's been more of the latter lately and I don't know how else to explain it.  Regardless, there are plenty of other sites I can never see from here without proxies or VPN.

        China is actually a rather infamous example...  But one downside to the Snowden reveal was, lots of areas started fussing about how to secure a more regional internet infrastructure.  That could be somewhat good if they made the data and connections equally available to lots of visitors, but it's also a new excuse for those areas where the government has always wanted to meddle from the engineering on up.
       

[Callie Del Noire]

Most other countries are not corporate quislings like the United States.

Do you honestly think that big business won't try to corner their market elsewhere?

If you're ..say.. looking at Newscorp and their UK subs, do you think they wouldn't try to 'choke' bandwidth with their competitors? Or that the Japanese media companies won't step on the smaller asian companies that come up with something innovative that might be market changing?

[chaoslord29]

The question is, if we can't rely on the supreme court and governments to protect our rights to freedom and privacy online, what are we going to do about it?

[Neysha]

From what I read in the newspaper, the court decision was as a result of a legal technicality of the FCC overreaching its supposed authority with regulating information services on the internet.

Congress is probably going to have to get off its fannies and see about pushing the existing bills on Internet Neutrality through committee finally.

[chaoslord29]

From what I read in the newspaper, the court decision was as a result of a legal technicality of the FCC overreaching its supposed authority with regulating information services on the internet.

That's entirely too tempered an interpretation. I demand alarmist extremism so that I might fight the good fight!

[Neysha]

That's entirely too tempered an interpretation. I demand alarmist extremism so that I might fight the good fight!

I AM MOVING TO SWEDEN AND TAKING MY BITCOINS WITH ME!

[chaoslord29]

I AM MOVING TO SWEDEN AND TAKING MY BITCOINS WITH ME!

Really? When you get there, can you confirm for me the existence of the fabled "Free Blowjobs & Icecream for Everyone" program as officially demanded and sanctioned by the Swedish Government?

Seriously, though, I'd emigrate there but it's too damn cold. Can't some nice Mediterranean country get behind ultra-progressive populist policies?

[Neysha]

Seriously, though, I'd emigrate there but it's too damn cold. Can't some nice Mediterranean country get behind ultra-progressive populist policies?

Well they tried, then the rich people stopped paying taxes, the lower classes demanded more subsidies and the Germans wouldn't loan them money anymore.

Basically, it's all Germany's fault... again.  :P

[chaoslord29]

Well they tried, then the rich people stopped paying taxes, the lower classes demanded more subsidies and the Germans wouldn't loan them money anymore.

Basically, it's all Germany's fault... again.  :P

Now, now, we can't keep blaming good Germans for the mistakes their leaders make.

[gaggedLouise]

Congress is probably going to have to get off its fannies and see about pushing the existing bills on Internet Neutrality through committee finally.

(my bold)

Now I see why the expression is "sitting on their hands". There are clearly things going on in the dark... :P

I AM MOVING TO SWEDEN AND TAKING MY BITCOINS WITH ME!

You're welcome, bring your skis!

[Oniya]

Apropos of nothing, 'fanny' is on the opposite side of the body in the UK...

Or were you talking about their interns?  *rimshot*

[gaggedLouise]

Apropos of nothing, 'fanny' is on the opposite side of the body in the UK...

Or were you talking about their interns?  *rimshot*

I was thinking of "insider crime" for sure.  :D

[chaoslord29]

Apropos of nothing, 'fanny' is on the opposite side of the body in the UK...

Or were you talking about their interns?  *rimshot*

o_O

I c wat u did thar

[Vekseid]

For the record, 'network neutrality' does not affect Elliquiy in the slightest. For everything, the US has been pretty big on the freedom of speech, and this is reflected in a lot of both legal and corporate culture. I wouldn't dare host Elliquiy from anywhere in the British Commonwealth or European Union.

This will probably not get overturned on appeal - the judge couldn't make a ruling any other way. The better solution is to lobby for the regulation to be put into place, or to ensure a separation of content providers, backbone providers, and end-connectivity providers. It's not like Google, Netflix, Microsoft, Facebook, and the like are nobodies. By their very nature these are extremely powerful companies with their own resources to fight this fight, since they're the ones whose bottom line risks the greatest impact.

[WendySlaveGirl]

For the record, 'network neutrality' does not affect Elliquiy in the slightest.

Actually, Elliquiy is EXACTLY the type of page that would be affected. The biggest downside to this ruling is that the ISPs can charge differently for different types of access both to the consumers and to the owners of websites.

Let's say they make it 3 tiers.

Tier 1 is the big boys - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. You get the same speeds you always got with them.
Tier 2 is the smaller companies - Local stores, smaller computer companies, game companies. They're slower than Tier 1 and it is noticeable but it is not slooooowwww.
Tier 3 are the independents. - Pages made by everyday people who have bought server space somewhere and that's about it. These will be lucky to load at dial up speeds.

The companies will charge website owners to move up Tiers. They will also charge consumers to have higher speeds on tier 2 and 3, basically you'd pay more to have what we have now.

This will have many effects. 1) It will drastically lower traffic at places like Elliquiy as people get tired of waiting for the page to load. It will also stifle the emergence of new businesses on the web because not only will you have all the traditional fees to deal with (credit card processing, LLC formation, legal fees, web server fees) but now if you want any chance at competing you'll have to pay more to the ISPs for them to load your page faster. Oh AND you'll have to pay to each ISP. Why do you think companies like Google, Amazon, and others are against this? They know that even for them it will drastically increase their cost of business.

[Vekseid]

Err, no, not in the slightest.

You are arguing that ISPs would be willing to polish their routing tables to be able to give special tiered treatment to IPs on an individual basis. That is, simply put, not going to happen. They have to handle these issues based on networks - people controlling /24s or more (in addition to being the smallest routable subnet, it's also the minimum anycast size, for much the same reason). If you don't own or at least dominate a /24 or equivalent (/48 for IPv6, etc) you're not going to be individually targeted. I own a lot of IPs for a small-time operation, yes, but I control a /28, a few /29s, and a few individual ips, that's it. Not even a /26 in total.

Go here, scroll down. That's who our datacenter peers with, click on Chicago and you'll see we have a direct line to Cogent, also.

Any proposed bill for privileged access would never reach us. It would either go to our connectivity providers, who would have to divvy up the cost based on bandwidth (as they already do), or possibly directly to our top host - Steadfast - who would do the same.

The day when Elliquiy uses enough bandwidth to get on that radar will surely be a happy one, but it's certainly not today.

[WendySlaveGirl]

I think they will do just that. Likely what they will do is slow all traffic down, much like what Comcast did to Bittorrent traffic. They will then contact companies and say "if you want consumers to get your stuff faster it will cost $X." Amazon, Google, etc, will be able to afford it. Some of the hosting companies might be able to afford it as well. Some won't though and you'll see that traffic slow to a crawl which will kill new business start ups.

Oh, and those companies that can afford the extra cost? They'll pass those costs on to the consumers. Hosting will cost more. Amazon Instant Video and Netflix streaming prices will go up. Most alarmingly in my opinion though is what will happen to innovation. At the moment the internet represents the one brightest spot for new companies to start and get a foothold. If Net Neutrality dies that is threatened.