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Republican net neutrality bill would gut FCC’s authority over broadband
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- spullara 12y agoI think the idea here is that a user could prioritize their Netflix traffic over their Dropbox traffic. It would be great actually if they offered QoS configuration to end users.
- panarky 12y agoConsumer please select one: [ X ] $99/mo - make Comcast-NBC-Universal content faster, 100 GB/day [ ] $199/mo - make all content the same speed, 1 GB/day
- spullara 12y agoI don't think it can be tied to payments though. It would really be just what you think is more important on your network.
- semperfaux 12y agoBased on the text quoted in the article, I think it's relevant to note that traffic can't be prioritized "based on compensation or lack thereof by the sender to the broadband Internet access service provider." I may be reading it wrong, but to me that says specifically that ISPs can't hold content providers hostage for payments, but says nothing about throttling end users' access to content.
- zaroth 12y agoTheoretically the goal is to allow some forms of desired prioritization without giving these natural monopolies a huge club to beat service providers up with. We want to be able to do prioritization of packets. QoS is not inherently evil. A smarter network can fully serve more clients for the same $$$ of infra, by understanding and prioritizing packets which are more or less sensitive to latency and/or packet loss. The problem is we simply can't trust the ISPs, and there's no choice / no competition to switch to when they misbehave. And as we can see, it's very difficult to write a law which only allows these "acceptable" forms of QoS. For example, if a customer wants lower latency on their VPN tunnel used for 4K HD video conferencing from home to the office, is it OK for Comcast to offer a higher priced plan to the consumer to get that? I think we want to keep these options open, and saying it has to be an opt-in service and show up on the consumers bill is an interesting middle-ground. The other part is ensuring the baseline service is actually providing what they say it is, and if you can't get a reliable 5Mbps netflix stream to work 95% of the time on your "50Mbps" plan then they are failing their baseline SLA and customers should be entitled to refunds.
- AnthonyMouse 12y ago> And as we can see, it's very difficult to write a law which only allows these "acceptable" forms of QoS. The IP header has QoS bits. It's not hard to write a law that doesn't prohibit ISPs from honoring those bits, or even from charging customers for a given amount of bandwidth at a given level of service. As long as any service/application can tag their packets however they like, and as long as the ISP is treating all equivalently tagged packets equivalently, there is no network neutrality problem with that. And it provides a clear line. Trying to put significantly more complicated logic than that into the middle of the network in order to try to recognize specific types of traffic is inherently defective anyway. The ISP would end up picking winners and losers based on what traffic it recognizes for prioritization. And it would inherently bias the future of the internet against innovations because new protocols would be unrecognized until they became sufficiently popular and would never become sufficiently popular if they can't be prioritized but have to compete against incumbent protocols that are.
- copsarebastards 12y agoBecause this has worked so well in the past with cable. [/sarcasm] Seriously, you can't buy a cable package without also paying for a bunch of bundled channels that nobody wants. Why would literally the same people behave differently just because it's internet instead of cable?
- valas 12y agoThat would not work. Most users don't care/don't know about about QoS, nor they want to learn. There was/is a ton of research on user-driven QoS, micro-payments, per-flow reservations, etc. etc. The result: there is no nice or simple scheme to a) expose QoS knobs to users b) align incentives of ISPS/ContentProviders/Users for micropayments, c) affordable equipment that can do per-user crediting across the Internet.
- tmandry 12y agoCan you link to any of this?
- valas 12y agoOn which specific part? E.g. networking research has ton of these kind of papers: http://conferences.sigcomm.org/hotnets/2006/estan06achieving.pdf http://conferences.sigcomm.org/hotnets/2006/estan06achieving... They never go beyond modeling and simulation because, if you read such works, you can see that it is extremely hard to adopt such schemes. Even between ISPs and content providers they endup with just 2-3 major pricing Tiers, because the added benefit if accounting more tiers is diminishing: http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2011/papers/sigcomm/p194.pdf http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2011/papers/sigcomm/p...
- valas 12y agoThat would not work. Most users don't care/don't know about about QoS, nor they want to learn. There was/is a ton of research on user-driven QoS, micro-payments, per-flow reservations, etc. etc. The result: there is no nice or simple scheme to a) expose QoS knobs to users b) align incentives of ISPS/ContentProviders/Users for micropayments, c) affordable equipment that can do per-user crediting across the Internet.
- spullara 12y agoIt would be great to get things like this out of the hands of arbitrary-law-makers (aka regulators).
- qualcommmm 12y agoI agree with you. Government regulation of the internet is going down the wrong hole. It's odd that opposing opinions can't be discussed on HN. They're just downvoted into oblivion and a hivemind forms.
- sethherr 12y agoIt isn't government regulation of the internet. It's government regulation of cable companies that provide the internet. I don't want the government monitoring or restricting my internet. I would like the government to prevent companies from doing that to me.
- crazy1van 12y ago> It isn't government regulation of the internet. It's government regulation of cable companies that provide the internet. I think this is a distinction without a difference. It isn't a restriction of free speech. It's a restriction on what the newspapers can print to deliver the speech.
- AnthonyMouse 12y ago> It isn't a restriction of free speech. It's a restriction on what the newspapers can print to deliver the speech. It's a restriction on bus drivers refusing passengers based on what newspaper they're reading.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- rosser 12y agoAs opposed to ... what, for-sale-lawmakers?
- kyrra 12y agoReading other news sources[1]: > Much of the language was lifted directly from the FCC's 2010 Open Internet Order, which was thrown out in court last year. [1] http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/16/7558715/net-neutrality-new-republican-bill-limit-fcc http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/16/7558715/net-neutrality-new...
- nzealand 12y agoWould this have stopped Comcast from letting Netflix slow to a crawl? I dont think so. There are always loopholes, and it would take years for the courts to determine if Comcast was breaking the law.
- gojomo 12y agoNetflix's famous slowdown may have been the fault of Cogent, Netflix's direct vendor, moreso than Comcast. See: http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/11/cogent-now-admits-slowed-netflixs-traffic-creating-fast-lane-slow-lane.html http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/11/cogent-now-admits-slo...
- seanp2k2 12y agotel·e·com·mu·ni·ca·tion ˌteləkəˌmyo͞onəˈkāSH(ə)n/ noun communication over a distance by cable, telegraph, telephone, or broadcasting. the branch of technology concerned with telecommunication. plural noun: telecommunications formal a message sent by telecommunication. plural noun: telecommunications But sure, let's pretend that the FCC shouldn't have the right to regulate ISPs, or that somehow ISPs aren't telecommunications companies</s>
- rubbingalcohol 12y agoSo captured Congressmen and the cable lobby rebranded the much rumored Title X after activist groups started referring to it as "Title Xfinity." Sen John Thune, a primary sponsor of this bill, has taken over $50,000 in political contributions between AT&T, Comcast, NCTA, Time Warner Cable, U.S. Telecom, and PACs associated with these groups. We're not talking about a well-reasoned GOP alternative to "Obama's plan to regulate the Internet." This is a bill written by cable lobbyists to hamstring the FCC while throwing a bone to the American public. Title II gives the FCC the authority it needs to prevent modern day monopolies from screwing up principles of net neutrality we've all enjoyed since day 1 of the Internet. These GOP plans should be viewed with a massive dose of skepticism, especially in light of the political contributions they've accepted in recent elections.
- Xeoncross 12y agoAny bills by Congressmen should be viewed this way. It's not like one side is not corrupt.
- nostromo 12y ago> captured Congressmen The FCC actually seems more captured than congress. The head of the FCC is a former lobbyist for ISPs and Telcos.
- cbd1984 12y ago> The head of the FCC is a former lobbyist for ISPs and Telcos. And what has he said recently about network neutrality? http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/08/us-usa-internet-neutrality-idUSKBN0KG2DU20150108 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/08/us-usa-internet-ne... Maybe the usual ideas about "regulatory capture" aren't as accurate as they seem.
- cbd1984 12y agohttp://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/08/us-usa-internet-neutrality-idUSKBN0KG2DU20150108 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/08/us-usa-internet-ne... Downvoting this story doesn't make it untrue.
- 0x5f3759df-i 12y agoSome criticisms from the group Public Knowledge: https://www.publicknowledge.org/press-release/public-knowledge-expresses-strong-concerns-about-sen.-thunes-net-neutrality-discussion-draft https://www.publicknowledge.org/press-release/public-knowled... This bill leaves plenty of holes for ISPs to abuse. Here is a few pieces of that article: - Allows discrimination in violation of the principles of the Open Internet. >For example, these principles would not have prevented AT&T from limiting FaceTime to particular tiers of service – as it tried to do in 2012. It would not address discriminatory use of data caps, such as Comcast has used to favor its own streaming content over that of rivals. It would not address potential issues arising at Internet interconnection, the gateway to the last mile. Even worse, by eliminating any flexibility on rulemaking or enforcement, the bill would prevent the FCC from addressing any new forms of discrimination and threats to openness that arise. - Does not effectively block ‘fast lanes.’ >Even with the protection the draft does provide – addressing blocking, fast lanes, and throttling – it opens a huge, undefined loophole of ‘specialized services.’ As this draft reads, Comcast or AT&T or any other provider can offer its over-the-top online streaming service as a ‘specialized service’ and give itself prioritized service. Companies could essentially sell prioritized service to specific applications or content simply by calling these fast lanes ‘specialized services.’ - Consumers lose protections while special interests gain new ones. >But while consumers lose, Hollywood wins. The draft contains a special carve out so that broadband providers can act as Hollywood’s special enforcers - Enforceability. >This draft would prevent the FCC from providing more clarity about what behavior runs afoul of the stated Internet openness principles. By requiring that the FCC only hear complaints, only the most well-heeled and well-lawyered companies and individuals may be able to enforce their rights. This bill is a wolf in sheep's clothing if I've ever seen one. Hopefully The President sticks to his statements and vetos this if it gets pushed through.
- Normati 12y agoIt sounds like the intention is actually much better than net neutrality - it claims to be trying to encourage a more competitive market. Proper competition would make net neutrality irrelevant, and would actually serve people better. For example, speeds would go up as providers actually compete for customers instead of having local monopolies.
- pstuart 12y agoDo you really think the intention here is for more competition? Perhaps this is more regulatory capture?
- cmdlinerambo 12y agoI would like to see net neutrality force uploads and downloads on service provided to consumers be equal. 50megabit service, allows 50megabit upload.
- cdolan92 12y agoNo, you actually dont. All ISPs operate on oversubscribing each available meg. If they did what you are proposing, the only options would be 1 mb up/down stream, 3 MB up/down speed, and 5 mb up/down speed. Many ISPs have 100-10,000x over subscriptions per meg
- beedogs 12y agoRepublicans: always just slightly worse than Democrats. Great choice last November, America! You surely won't regret it for decades.
- ck2 12y agoThey are just getting warmed up for 2015 Imagine if they grab both sides of washington in 2016 and then the supreme court nominations by the end of this decade. Country will become a wasteland.