ISPs Are Now Free To Discriminate Against Internet Services

[kabaak]

So let me get this straight: I pay Cox for 1 TB per month of usage. My understanding is that usage is already paid for. Netflix subscriptions are up and Cox Cable subscriptions are down. Obvious fix: Start charging Netflix for excessive bandwidth usage (that's already been paid for by me, the consumer). Netflix has to jack up rates. Cox offers 1-year crazy low rate with a 3-year agreement (that balloons). Cox cable is artificially sustained for a while longer.

Sleeper in all this: When you upgrade to 4K LCD TV's and start streaming at 25 MBPS (5x what you are doing now in HD), blowing past your 1 TB limit, Cox hits you for $10 for every 50GB overage. Of course, you can pay more ($30-$50 per month) for more bandwidth (just like Netflix may have to do). So they pay and we pay for the transmission of the exact same byte. Hmm. Not far-reaching stuff here folks. This is life as we know it unless something changes.

Corporate Strategy: Pass along the cost of doing business to someone else, hell double it up for good measure. Make more profits. It's like taking candy from a baby - or a bunch of babies in this case. I know I'm wailing like one right about now.

PS: Oklahoma City was getting Google fiber until providers like Cox decided they didn't want Google on their utility poles. Cox rolled out Gigabit Internet to a few neighborhoods to show we could do the same thing. Google pulls out of the market. Cox Gigabit deployment slows to a crawl, lol. 1 TB limit enacted in the market.

Help me out here smart people.....

 

[shrapnel_indie]

The way the U.S. Constitution reads, despite what the Feds want it to read, and have acted like it reads, The States are in charge of the Fed Gov't, NOT the other way around,

Yeah, by electing representatives to Congress, which established the FCC.

which means States should and do have the right (it was never a right explicitly granted to the Federal Govt. All non-explicitly given authority was given to The States and The People.) to make any laws they wish as long as it doesn't violate The U.S. Constitution, and The People accept the law.

So yes, the States have the authority to make their own NN laws....

Good luck convincing the Supreme Court that's not a breech of Interstate Commerce clause. I know that clause has been stretched and contorted in various interesting ways, but the Internet seems a more direct application of it.

as long as it doesn't violate The U.S. Constitution is key in what I said. Sure Interstate Commerce will play a part in what they can and can't do, but at the same time there are elements the States can do. First is to get rid of sanctioned State and local monopolies and increase incentives for smaller ISPs and the larger ISPs both a chance to enter markets locked out due to a competitor being given the right to exclusively serve areas. Wide Open commerce borders is what Interstate Commerce laws are basically about. I'm sure ISPs will try to use the Interstate Commerce laws to fight it, but it doesn't apply to all the possible laws.

 

[Giroro]

Well, we're screwed

Hardly.

Somehow the internet survived without network neutrality rules all the way up to 2015.

That's not true. I won't repeat myself too much, so see above. The only period of time where there was "for sure" no net neutrality was from 2014 to 2015. Between 2010 and 2014 there was the "Open Internet Order". Between 2005 and 2010 there was the FCC's "principle of open internet" Which were not enforceable, but at the time it was believed the FCC would and could create and enforce real regulation if those principles were broken (which is why they created the open internet order in 2010).

Before 2005, the majority of people were using dial-up, which counted as phone service, and therefore a utility. Phone service neutrality is regulated MUCH more heavily than the internet was in 2015.

 

[LORD_ORION]

The situation is far more complicated than most anyone gives thought to, and it started mainly BECAUSE of federal telecom monopoly regulations in the first place

Some background
There is no single magic internet infrastructure behind the scenes delivering packets like how your water or electricity is delivered. It is a brutally mismanaged series of overlapping networks whose control and total cost of ownership cannot even determine a real price for the cost of delivering a packet from pont a to point b.
because...

1) DSL carriers (Baby Bells) took governmental "high speed internet" infrastructure money under the guise of being classified as "common carriers" (and thus would have to allow access to competing ISPs using government price fixing )

2) Surprise! These same DSL carriers re-categorized themselves as Information Service Providers instead of "common carriers", AFTER taking the money, so they didn't have to share access to their infrastructure to other ISPs with federal price fixing.

3) The government says GTFO to these DSL carriers, and applies massive regulation to the ENTIRE industry. (Cable providers and Google fibre say "whoa WTF, we paid for our own infrastructure, and you did not allow us to take the same subsidies you offered to the DSL carriers, F this!")

4) This regulatory capture by the FCC quickly weaponizes along political/lobbying lines, and depending who controls the power, is used to attack the competition.

Aftermath: Confusing Lawsuits are won and lost without consistency and infrastructure owners misbehave by censoring real time streaming events and price gouging their competition if they feel they are being treated unfairly by targeted government regulations. Thousands of ISPs go out of business, because their business models are NOT sustainable without the common carrier price fixing that cannot be enforced without drawn out legal intervention, and tax payers are out 1 trillion dollars. [all because of federally mandated monopoly laws from the 1920s for telephones are still screwing consumers and businesses alike nearly 100 years later]

Ultimately,
You would want less government regulation, because that is what caused this entire mess. Even all the original censoring of services shenanigans did not begin until the FCC regulations were used as a weapon by lobbyists.

So, yes, you should want net neutrality to be thrown out (so the people who need the infrastructure to deliver their services are the ones who pay for it, and not you, the tax payer or person who doe snot use those services). The infrastructure WILL be built, or nobody will use those services.

BUT!

You should want revolving door regulators to GTFO of the industry so there in not a political weaponization of the internet. We've already seen a DSL vs other regulatory war cost tax payers 1 trillion dollars by using the FCC as a weapon. (This allowed the rest of the world to surpass the US in providing internet services) and now we are seeing censorship tactics using the same political/lobbying forces to influence the next election.

Basically, FCC mandated net neutrality is only your friend until regulations change and it isn't, and then what do you do? Not use the internet? Lobbyists ARE NEVER your friend.

So yeah, Ajit is both right on this one issue, but is also your enemy at the same time.

 

[Giroro]

Why should the government dictate how private companies run their business? As long as nothing illegal or harmful is being done I don't see an issue. Sure it sucks being throttled but you live in a republic, not a socialized haven where everyone gets a participation trophy.

America's economy is utterly dependent on the internet. Not to mention that most of the Internet's basic infrastructure is buried on public land. You might as well be asking why the government get involved in the businesses that operate electricity and water service.
To quote Tom Wheeler at the time: "This is no more a plan to regulate the Internet than the First Amendment is a plan to regulate free speech. They both stand for the same concept."

The ISPs now technically have the power legally to shut down the operations of every bank and major company in the country. Its almost certainly never going to happen (at least until somebody figures out a way to profit from extortion). I'm not trying to be be hyperbolic to to make anybody panic... but the potential harm is far too great to be acceptable. If we Americans are to accept that risk, then we need to do so on a stronger basis than " the vague unease that that everything the government does is automatically bad".

What makes you think that having the major ISPs secretly and independently deciding what content you can access will be any better than the services being classified as "common carrier"? Especially when there is a huge amount of evidence to the contrary.

Before you keep piling onto a mountain of ignorance, actually go and read Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. Go read the specific rules. Educate yourself and try to base your opinions on the unbiased facts at hand instead of emotion and fear mongering. The 2015 FCC even used a nice big font instead of trying to sneak it into the fine print of a service contract, so its easy to read. The paragraphs are numbered, which ones do you think are unreasonable?
Net neutrality rules
Communications act of 1934

Anyways, best of luck to you downloading Rush "probably going to lose most his sponsors today because they are all websites plus Apple" Limbaugh's podcast, or whatever. Hopefully the "liberal media" like CNBC (Comcast) and CNN (Time Warner Cable), never find a reason to stop you from supporting their competitors and political opponents.

Oh, and as a side note, the governmental organization of a republic has nothing to do with the ideology of socialism. Those things are not mutually exclusive. You can have a socialized republic just as much as you can have a capitalistic democracy or a communist dictatorship.

 

[austintx1985]

Oh, and as a side note, the governmental organization of a republic has nothing to do with the ideology of socialism. Those things are not mutually exclusive. You can have a socialized republic just as much as you can have a capitalistic democracy or a communist dictatorship.

That's true, but, sadly, many people have been taught that more government involvement into things equals socialism which equals Russia/USSR/bad stuff that we don't want. Hence the strong reactions of people when it comes to regulation.

 

[shrapnel_indie]

America's economy is utterly dependent on the internet. Not to mention that most of the Internet's basic infrastructure is buried on public land. You might as well be asking why the government get involved in the businesses that operate electricity and water service.
To quote Tom Wheeler at the time: "This is no more a plan to regulate the Internet than the First Amendment is a plan to regulate free speech. They both stand for the same concept."

How many times has the government lied to its citizens?

The ISPs now technically have the power legally to shut down the operations of every bank and major company in the country. Its almost certainly never going to happen (at least until somebody figures out a way to profit from extortion).

They'd be fools to shut off internet access for banks. It would slit their throats as the banks, in particular, the central bank, would retaliate.

I'm not trying to be be hyperbolic to to make anybody panic... but the potential harm is far too great to be acceptable. If we Americans are to accept that risk, then we need to do so on a stronger basis than " the vague unease that that everything the government does is automatically bad".

Look at history... the vagueness is partly lack of knowledge of the past and partly because of the unknown.

What makes you think that having the major ISPs secretly and independently deciding what content you can access will be any better than the services being classified as "common carrier"? Especially when there is a huge amount of evidence to the contrary.

What makes you think the government is actually better?

Before you keep piling onto a mountain of ignorance, actually go and read Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. Go read the specific rules. Educate yourself and try to base your opinions on the unbiased facts at hand instead of emotion and fear mongering. The 2015 FCC even used a nice big font instead of trying to sneak it into the fine print of a service contract, so its easy to read. The paragraphs are numbered, which ones do you think are unreasonable?
Net neutrality rules
Communications act of 1934

Anyways, best of luck to you downloading Rush "probably going to lose most his sponsors today because they are all websites plus Apple" Limbaugh's podcast, or whatever. Hopefully the "liberal media" like CNBC (Comcast) and CNN (Time Warner Cable), never find a reason to stop you from supporting their competitors and political opponents.

Not exactly a fan of Rush here, but... if Rush has been championing the downfall of NN, and his sponsors were concerned that the removal of NN would hurt them, I'm pretty sure they'd have already put pressure on him to drop it or lose sponsorship.

Oh, and as a side note, the governmental organization of a republic has nothing to do with the ideology of socialism. Those things are not mutually exclusive. You can have a socialized republic just as much as you can have a capitalistic democracy or a communist dictatorship.

You're right there. However, there is overwhelming evidence that every government that has gone socialist or communist is the people lose. The USSR fell. China survives on slave or near-slave labor as the government itself acts in a very capitalistic manner with the goods produced there. Greece went bankrupt Socialism itself is an utopian view that never gets implemented the way it's supposed to work.

 

[Martell1977]

Government sanctioned monopolies are the real issue here. ... In my area I have only 3 choices for internet, ...

Lucky bastard! So you're one of the relatively few in the US that have more than one to chose from!

It might seem that way, but there is really only 1 option, cable. As I pointed out, satellite is too slow and expensive (data caps) to be viable and Frontier (DSL and FIOS) are usreliable at best, I wont say what they really are, don't want to offend any snowflakes. I tried Frontier FIOS, I paid for 25mb/s, but got about less than 2mb/s when it was working and that it only worked about 5% for the day. Verizon used to offer FIOS here and I had it for about 10 years, until Frontier bought them out and it's been garbage ever since.

While it may seem there is 3 options, there's really only 1. If there were more than 1 cable, FIOS, DSL provider, then that would be actual competition. Instead, they all price their service packages alike.

 

[efred]

And this is a good thing; now, you'll at least have the chance to change and pick a competitor, instead of the oligarchy that Obama selected.

Ever since this "Net Neutrality" went into effect, where I live, every. Single. Scenario that you people swore up and down it was going to prevent, happened. Our internet has been throttled, the price of service went up, the service went down, and there's no one else to go to. My neighbor works for the local ISP, and he said, even after the millions of Obamagrant dollars they received for upgrading their infrastructure, their service is overloaded, so everyone is throttled during high-volume hours. And then, there's Verizon, who promised UNLIMITED internet, unless during high-volume hours, and then it's throttled. So much for your much-touted "Net-Neutrality". More like Net-Neutered.

So, you're credibility with me and others who have experienced the same thing has gone down.

 

[Ed Chombeau]

not to worry--I didin't two years ago --

 

[14sapce]

It would be great to get a comprehensive list that details all of the instances corporations have discriminated against ISP's since 1990.

 

[Questors]

Government sanctioned monopolies are the real issue here. It's just like how they limited health insurance companies from selling over state lines. In my area I have only 3 choices for internet, Frontier, Spectrum and satellite. I use too much data and need too much bandwidth for satellite to be viable, Frontier is atrocious, so reality for me is that it's Spectrum or nothing.

They should have restored competition first...but that's government for you, putting the cart before the horse. The NN regulations were a band-aide, competition is what was actually needed.

Exactly!

 

[Questors]

This guy was and still is an idiot. He also ushered in the McCarthy-istic and definitely communist Patriot Act. Make you spy on your neighbors and report them to the "Man" comrade.

 

[Questors]

The FCC chairman has already warned states not to try and pass their own net neutrality rules, implying that those rules will not count because the ISPs only need to follow FCC’s federal rules.

The way the U.S. Constitution reads, despite what the Feds want it to read, and have acted like it reads, The States are in charge of the Fed Gov't, NOT the other way around, which means States should and do have the right (it was never a right explicitly granted to the Federal Govt. All non-explicitly given authority was given to The States and The People.) to make any laws they wish as long as it doesn't violate The U.S. Constitution, and The People accept the law.

So yes, the States have the authority to make their own NN laws.... doubt they'll try though as, like others have pointed out they did squat about increasing competition and improving quality of service.

Outstanding commentary! Another person that understands the Founders reasoning and the U.S. Constitution. I am not alone; hope is renewed.

 

[Steve Istvan Horvath]

Goodbye Free Porn! When ISPs will have the power to block some domains, Free Porn domains will be among the first, and freedom of expression next! Welcome to Trump's Internet in America!

 

[svan71]

"the reality is that in almost half the country, ISPs have effective STATE-granted broadband monopolies," the answer obviously is more goverment control? Remove the grants.

Comcast started throttling BitTorrent traffic (like Pirate Bay) we need our stolen movies and software as fast as Netflix paying customers receive their data.

Some of the same ISPs have also been found guilty of spying on their customers’ browsing, injecting ads into their browsing streams, overcharging them on their monthly bills and equipment they didn't order, and so on. Which has nothing to do with NN.

The big internet providers have already proven that given the chance to hurt competition or to simply save some money by restricting certain types of traffic, they will take it, especially if there isn’t too much competitive pressure not to do that and get away with it. So lets send in the bureaucrats to help. More goverment means more options and lowere prices just like Obamacare.

 

[Rexer]

Internet rules. A money grab for someone. Convoluted to say the least. Mostly because it's in our face as the user.

 

[bit_user]

If the internet should fall under the Commerce Clause, then shouldn't Congress be on the hook to make laws governing this instead of the laughable FCC we have at the moment? Seems like that would kinda resolve itself.

Congress established the FCC because, for a long time, it was understood that Congress is not good at dealing with the minutiae of making and enforcing all the rules for regulating industries. Also, putting it in the hands of the bureaucracy traditionally makes something less of a political football.

Nowadays, bureaucracy is a bad word and so we outsource their jobs to industry lobbyists who write the laws that regulate their industries.

 

[bit_user]

as long as it doesn't violate The U.S. Constitution is key in what I said. Sure Interstate Commerce will play a part in what they can and can't do, but at the same time there are elements the States can do. First is to get rid of sanctioned State and local monopolies and increase incentives for smaller ISPs and the larger ISPs both a chance to enter markets locked out due to a competitor being given the right to exclusively serve areas.

They can deal with local ISP competition the same way as they deal with other utilities, and without touching net neutrality. It's a separate issue, and is actually harder without net neutrality, since big players can now make deals with content providers like Netflix that further disadvantage small players.

BTW, there's a good reason why NN helps the little ISPs - because without NN, a dominant player has both a carrot and a stick that it can use on content providers to make them play ball. If Netflix makes a deal with a small upstart, now Comcast can just throttle the heck out of them until they back out of their agreement with the competitor or cut an even better deal for Comcast.

 

[bit_user]

America's economy is utterly dependent on the internet. Not to mention that most of the Internet's basic infrastructure is buried on public land. You might as well be asking why the government get involved in the businesses that operate electricity and water service.
To quote Tom Wheeler at the time: "This is no more a plan to regulate the Internet than the First Amendment is a plan to regulate free speech. They both stand for the same concept."

How many times has the government lied to its citizens?

As long as there is a government, you'll be able to find things to complain about. But life without government is worse than life with it, because we need it to act in our common interests (including to regulate the marketplace and ensure companies' incentives align with consumers, instead of being able to exploit them).

The solution, then, is to demand accountability and transparency. Not to try and destroy the government that made America great.

They'd be fools to shut off internet access for banks. It would slit their throats as the banks, in particular, the central bank, would retaliate.

Please explain this point. The Federal Reserve has no such mandate, and how would it retaliate?

What makes you think the government is actually better?

The fact that we can vote. But most of the people don't have any dealing with most of the businesses, so no way of controlling or influencing them. And the amount of influence you have over even the businesses you do deal with is proportional to your wealth and the amount you spend with them - also complicated by whether there's viable competition (cue government regulators) and enough transparency that you can discern the full impact they're having on you (which the complicated architecture of modern businesses greatly complicates).

History is full of examples of what happens when capitalism is not kept in check by good governance. It usually doesn't end well for the aristocracy, and it's never good for the people.

China survives on slave or near-slave labor as the government itself acts in a very capitalistic manner with the goods produced there.

Actually, Chinese wages and working conditions have been improving for a long time. The biggest issues now are the property bubble that's making realestate unaffordable and their increasingly authoritarian government that seems to be increasingly resembling that of North Korea.

China is a shining example of how brutally effective good public/private partnership can be. But I sure wouldn't like to live there and certainly wouldn't advocate for that degree of involvement in the private sector.

 

[bit_user]

And this is a good thing; now, you'll at least have the chance to change and pick a competitor, instead of the oligarchy that Obama selected.

Really? Maybe the problem is much closer to home than you think. Maybe it has nothing to do with net neutrality and everything to do with your state & local government, who's been bought off by your ISP.

Ever since this "Net Neutrality" went into effect, where I live, every. Single. Scenario that you people swore up and down it was going to prevent, happened. Our internet has been throttled, the price of service went up, the service went down, and there's no one else to go to.

Nobody promised that. The only thing they promised is that your content won't be selectively throttled.

My neighbor works for the local ISP, and he said, even after the millions of Obamagrant dollars they received for upgrading their infrastructure, their service is overloaded, so everyone is throttled during high-volume hours.

Perhaps your neighbor is too low-level to know this, but I'm going to bet your ISP is making pretty healthy profits and paying them out to executives and as dividends to their investors, instead of investing them in better infrastructure.

The only way to fix this is to get your local & state government to make the ISP market more competitive or to get them to better regulate the ISP you do have.

So, you're credibility with me and others who have experienced the same thing has gone down.

People (and by that I mean some of its more enthusiastic and less informed advocates on forums and in the media - not actually the regulators who designed it) definitely over-sold net neutrality. But it was intended to address one specific aspect of internet access - not every and any problem with it.

 

[bit_user]

I hope someone beats the **** out of that punk Ajit Pai, along with his ****-eating-grin.

Sorry, but I had to down-vote this. I share your displeasure, but we really don't want to go down the road of political violence. If we leave aside the issue of criminality and bloodlust, and try to look at this rationally, it's not going to fix this problem - he'll just be replaced with someone who's probably even more draconian. Worse yet, that's only going to deepen the political divide and make everybody less safe. So, I really hope people don't try to retaliate - even though it almost seems as if he's egging them on.

The main solution is to win elections. And I share your wish to get money out of politics - especially by corporations and other organizations. But until then, we can potentially try to collectively counter the bribery by the carriers with our own campaign contributions. Sometimes you might not need to out-spend them, but just even the scales a bit.

 

[tamalero]

Don't worry guys, we can always just go back to the "innovation" of the Dial-up Era and the Net Bubble.

... Oh wait, the major ISPs also own all the phone lines, and the current FCC is allowing telecoms to abandon that infrastructure in place and switch to VOIP (and they also lifted the requirement that telecoms prove their new VOIP services are functionally equivalent). You better hope that the ground never shifts and breaks a phone wire, because an ISP will never, ever fix it. Especially now that they can legally add nerfed, censored, and legal-to-wiretap-and-data-mine-without-a-warrent "phone" service as an unregulated up-charge to your internet bill.

It's a very frustrating situation. Ajit Pai has been using "People still have the choice to get unbiased information online" as an excuse to deregulate local news, broadcast tv, radio, and newspaper - all of those regulations were put in place to prevent monopolies and preserve access to objective information, by the way. And then he turns around and destroys the guarantee that people will be able to choose what content they see online.
Net Neutrality isn't the first nail in the coffin on the destruction of free information, it's the last. Go look at the other regulations that the FCC has removed in the past few months. A company like Comcast/NBC can buy up every local TV station in a market (including your local Fox and CBS affiliates). They then can also legally buy every newspaper and radio station.
And when you get online? They also happen to be your only choice in ISP, and can censor anything they want. Try to call your congressman and complain? You can't, they can block that too because they let the Title II landlines to rot away and switched all the phone service to barely-functional VOIP.

Here's another "innovation" that telecoms could do with all their newfound "internet freedom": once carriers switch over from Title II landline service to unregulated VOIP, the dial-tone and the "ringback" tone you hear replaced with advertisements. Heck, they could start randomly disconnecting conversations-in-progress until both parties take a "commercial break" and verbally confirm that they have listened to the ad.


This all would have all been an unthinkable scenario a few months ago, but now its legal. Although a court may ultimately need to decide if switching phone service to VOIP will circumvent the Title II classification protecting landlines.

The FCC exists for a reason. That reason, of course, was always to protect citizens and extremely valuable national resources in the face of the monopolistic telephone company shenanigans. There's good reasons that the Communications act of 1934 has been necessary for over 80 years. The internet is far more important than the telephone ever was. Both America's and the World's economy is dependent on it. The internet needs strong legislative and possibly, constitutional protections.

f*king this.

Its amazing that so many people are blinded by faith on corporations.. corporations are NOT your friend, you are a tool to the means of getting money and power. If they can get away with squeezing you for everything you have.. they WILL do it.

Just like companies and oligarchs did before.

The US really feels like they are going back to the 1800's where certain multibillionaires owned everything and acted like untouchable Feudal lords thanks to their lobyyism(aka corruption) power on government.

 

[bit_user]

The US really feels like they are going back to the 1800's where certain multibillionaires owned everything and acted like untouchable Feudal lords thanks to their lobyyism(aka corruption) power on government.

Government is the best defense The People have against it. Like a virus or a cancer, the wealthy & powerful seek to subvert government to serve their interests. Then, they foster cynicism and tell us government is the problem so we'll let them de-fang or destroy the parts they can't co-opt.

At the root of the problem is that most people don't really understand capitalism. It's merely a way of harnessing self-interest in order to serve the interests of society. But, without guard rails in place, corporations quickly turn from serving the public to feeding on us. Man created corporations and money - not God. No one and no thing has a fundamental right to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth regardless of the consequences for society.

The reason democracy (generally speaking) goes with capitalism is that you need democracy to keep capitalism in check. Capitalism doesn't want democracy or somehow naturally lead to it. But don't get me wrong - I'm no anti-capitalist. The real reason I want well-regulated markets is because I ultimately fear for capitalism.

 

[aquielisunari]

I can see some people trying VPNs to circumvent anything a ISP might try and implement. Many people use VPNs for work and it is therefore difficult to know if that is the case or is they are using for other reasons. There will be issues. Then the states may try and implement there own rules which they have a constitutional right to. Then the Constitution will be once again reexamined by the Supreme Court. We see Colorado,Washington, California, many other states and even the District of Columbia flexing their muscle on a certain thing. Thank goodness for that. We've gotten so backwards.

Now, do you want a M$ or Assle computer?