7 ms·

AT&T previews lawsuit it plans to file against FCC

99 points by Selfcommit 12y ago

chasing 12y ago
Is AT&T trying to muddle the concept of an ISP as something that delivers content and an ISP as something that hosts content? That's all I can figure, here. Especially when writing about the ability to decline service to customers. I'm not sure how net neutrality relates to AT&T having freedom to pick and choose its customers. (Surely the folks that just want their content delivered -- Hacker News, for example -- don't consider themselves AT&T customers.)
- wtallis 12y ago
  It looks like they're at least trying to muddle the concepts of an ISP and a search engine. But I found the complaint to be overall pretty hard to parse.
- aioprisan 12y ago
  Exactly. And wouldn't this mean that all telephony services carried over the internet wouldn't fall under Title II, which defies common sense?
- rsingel 12y ago
  They are. If they just deliver packets then they are clearly Title II. Last time the FCC did this (2004/5), the ISPs claimed that their homepages and email service and DNS made them not "telecommunications". Well, Gmail, OpenDNS, Google DNS and Facebook (new homepage), make those arguments less useful. So "caching" is the new DNS. Not sure how they'll deal with the rise of VPNs and HTTPS though. VPNs and non-cacheable are the most clear argument that people pay broadband ISPs just to deliver their packets.
- bsimpson 12y ago
  Wouldn't that be wonderfully self-reinforcing? "We need to use sophisticated computers to switch our networks because we use deep packet inspection to accomplish Fuckery; therefore, we are an information service; therefore, you have to keep letting us use sophisticated computers in the name of Fuckery."
aioprisan 12y ago
In other words, this will have to be settled in court.
- rsingel 12y ago
  This is largely political saber rattling. AT&T's best arguments are going to be procedural. If FCC gets past arguments it didn't dot the i's, then this will go to the Supreme Court where AT&T and Verizon will get walloped. I can explain why, but basically there are 9 votes lined up against the ISPs on reclassification.
  - r00fus 12y ago
    I'd love to hear why you think there are 9 votes for reclassification, btw.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  Well, duh. The telecoms have sued over every previous move regarding net neutrality, and they've made it very clear that they are going to continue to do so even if the FCC does exactly what the court in the last case said they could do. No one is surprised by this, least of all the FCC Commissioners considering voting on the proposals. I suspect that Wheeler's staff already has prepared legal analyses addressing most of the issues AT&T might raise in a lawsuit. Its hardly their first rodeo.
sarciszewski 12y ago
I stopped having any sympathy for AT&T after the Auernheimer case. If they wanted to garner public support for any reason, a move like this is likely to kill it for a lot of people. Myself included. (I know Auernheimer's not well-liked, and I don't agree with his politics, but he deserved to win that case on appeal.)
- mullingitover 12y ago
  I read the indictment [1]. Auernheimer wasn't a white hat security researcher--he intentionally went after AT&T with intent to damage them and reap rewards from it. He's not exactly a martyr for the cause of freedom. [1] http://www.scribd.com/doc/113664772/46-Indictment http://www.scribd.com/doc/113664772/46-Indictment
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - guelo 12y ago
    An indictment is a deliberately biased, one-sided document.
cl42 12y ago
The Economist's recent article on net neutrality and common carriage is fascinating and related: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21641201-why-network-neutrality-such-intractable-problemand-how-solve-it-gordian-net http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21641201-why-network-n... Part of the interesting piece is the history of "common carriage": "The idea that certain businesses are so essential that they must not discriminate between customers is as old as ferries. With only one vessel in town, a boatman was generally not allowed to charge a butcher more than a carpenter to move goods. This concept, called 'common carriage', has served the world well, most recently on the internet." I've never doubted my support for net neutrality, and the legal history of "common carriage" makes this even more obvious.
- xdissent 12y ago
  But strangely the author of the Economist post concludes that the market should be left to regulate itself. Even stranger, they immediately lament the fact that it's failed to do so in the 75% of America where there is a single broadband provider. Which makes me wonder - will the FCC action do anything to expand the provider market, or merely ensure the quality of currently available access?
  - toast0 12y ago
    > Which makes me wonder - will the FCC action do anything to expand the provider market, No, the provider market is unlikely to significantly expand without local loop unbundling; fair access to poles and conduit may help in some cases, but overbuilding is still going to be expensive and limited. > or merely ensure the quality of currently available access? We'll have to wait and see what falls under acceptable and unacceptable network management, to see what happens to quality.
    - cl42 12y ago
      I think there's an interesting interplay between this FCC announcement and the earlier one on classifying "broadband" connection speeds of 25 Mbps and above. If an ISP is required to abide by net neutrality and can only sell broadband when it meets the above requirement, then the FCC is essentially mandating quality and consistency of service.
shaftoe 12y ago
While I don't like Internet providers creating different classes of traffic, the idea of the government getting involved should terrify anyone who values innovation and freedom. Soon, we'll end up with a monopoly guided by regulations from lobbyists and using laws as a weapon against competition. That's hardly better than the problem we seek to resolve.
- badsock 12y ago
  Genuinely curious, how would you resolve the problem differently?
  - aaron42net 12y ago
    The lack of provider competition isn't a natural monopoly. It's a government-created monopoly/duopoly in a given market. Instead of regulating the one or two providers in a market, we could try a different model that improves competition. One way is to do city-owned and maintained layer 1, like Chattanooga (http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/20/technology/innovation/chattanooga-internet/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/20/technology/innovation/chatta...), and sell access to as many ISPs want it. The other way is to break the city franchise model. Cities generally grant franchise rights to cable and phone companies, excluding other providers for a promise of universal coverage and a few percent of the revenue. The latter is what Google Fiber is asking for from the cities it goes into: - It wants blanket access to all of the telephone poles and other right-of-ways, without having to do per-pole applications, application fees, and approval process that can take weeks/months each. - It wants to not have to do universal access, but rather only roll into neighborhoods with a high enough density to be profitable. - It won't pay the city a percentage of revenue. Instead, it agrees to build out free internet access to schools, public spaces, etc. Google Fiber's model has the advantage of not relying on a city to properly maintain a fiber network, but the disadvantage of leaving poor communities un-served.
- dasil003 12y ago
  I don't think this libertarian sloganeering does anything to help. Freedom is something that individual persons deserve, not massive entrenched corporations who are throwing their weight around to prevent any innovation from happening and keep their profits fat. It's true that government intervention screws a lot of things up, but so does unrestricted capitalism. We can't solve the biggest problems of today with reductionist ideologies.
shmerl 12y ago
Instead of wasting money on courts AT&T should upgrade all their DSL lines to fiber optics, lower prices on their plans and increase bandwidth. But of course they'd rather just whine about how their monopoly is threatened by Title II. I hope they'll lose big deal. Though it wouldn't help anything of the above anyway, since even with Title II AT&T won't be facing much competition. They'd be just more limited in ways they can abuse their monopoly.
- droopybuns 12y ago
  If you develop a successful business plan selling pineapples- and then a regulator comes in and says that assumptions x, y, & z are no longer legal- why would a business owner decide not to "waste money" on courts? Is it not obvious that the best reason to do so is that you've made investments based on a set of assumptions that have a longer horizon than the next 6 months? The courts exist to provide relief in the case of a conflict. Without them, the only conflict solution is violence. If a company has invested billions in network upgrades and has a regulator come in and upset the apple cart- it's either cheaper to accept it or it's disastrous. I know the appeal of hyperbole, but apply occam's razor. Why would they 'waste money' on the courts? Swapping copper for fiber requires expensive trench digging. Planning upgrades costs billions. Monopoly is a word which you are misusing. Verizon is the leading wireless ISP in the country. Comcast is the leading wireline ISP in the country. Centurylink is a dominant force in ISP delivery.
  - shmerl 12y ago
    > If you develop a successful business plan selling pineapples- and then a regulator comes in and says that assumptions x, y, & z are no longer legal- why would a business owner decide not to "waste money" on courts? Now change pineapples to air and consider a colony on some remote asteroid. Do you get the idea better? > Monopoly is a word which you are misusing. Verizon is the leading wireless ISP in the country. Comcast is the leading wireline ISP in the country. Centurylink is a dominant force in ISP delivery. It's not misused. Monopoly is clearly present in areas where there is no choice between all those options you listed (for example for landline Internet). Only few places have multiple choices. And even then they are often colluded - i.e agree with each other not to compete in order to prevent lowering prices and spending money on improving the service. So those cases for users are essentially a monopoly anyway, even if formally they have "choices".
Tiksi 12y ago
"I have no illusions that any of this will change what happens on February 26," when the FCC is expected to vote, AT&T Federal Regulatory VP Hank Hultquist wrote in a blog post yesterday. "But when the FCC has to defend reclassification before an appellate court, it will have to grapple with these and other arguments. " I might be misreading something, but is he not saying "We know this is useless but we want to waste the FCC's time and resources anyways" ? I'm not familiar with how lawsuits for these kinds of cases work, but wouldn't this be enough for a judge to throw away any lawsuit they file? If they clearly state t hey have no intention other than to get in the way, it doesn't seem like a valid lawsuit to me.
- Alupis 12y ago
  > I might be misreading something, but is he not saying "We know this is useless but we want to waste the FCC's time and resources anyways" ? No, he's simply saying this prior release is not going to influence the FCC vote in any way, shape or form on Feb 26th. However, a court battle after-wards might (as it did previously with the FCC National Broadband Act and the courts ultimately ruled the FCC had no authority to do what they proposed).
  - Tiksi 12y ago
    Ah, alright, thanks for the clarification, I guess I did misread it.
- wmf 12y ago
  He's saying that the threat of lawsuit isn't enough to prevent the FCC from going through with the reclassification, so they're going to wait for it to happen and then sue to overturn the FCC's decision.
jasonjei 12y ago
I hope the FCC has the balls to say, "So sue me."
skywhopper 12y ago
AT&T's argument appears to be that since they are already shaping traffic and abusing their customer's trust, they aren't actually an Internet service provider anyway, so they can't be regulated as one.

99 points by Selfcommit 12y ago

Is AT&T trying to muddle the concept of an ISP as something that delivers content and an ISP as something that hosts content? That's all I can figure, here. Especially when writing about the ability to decline service to customers. I'm not sure how net neutrality relates to AT&T having freedom to pick and choose its customers. (Surely the folks that just want their content delivered -- Hacker News, for example -- don't consider themselves AT&T customers.)

wtallis 12y ago
It looks like they're at least trying to muddle the concepts of an ISP and a search engine. But I found the complaint to be overall pretty hard to parse.
aioprisan 12y ago
Exactly. And wouldn't this mean that all telephony services carried over the internet wouldn't fall under Title II, which defies common sense?
rsingel 12y ago
They are. If they just deliver packets then they are clearly Title II. Last time the FCC did this (2004/5), the ISPs claimed that their homepages and email service and DNS made them not "telecommunications". Well, Gmail, OpenDNS, Google DNS and Facebook (new homepage), make those arguments less useful. So "caching" is the new DNS. Not sure how they'll deal with the rise of VPNs and HTTPS though. VPNs and non-cacheable are the most clear argument that people pay broadband ISPs just to deliver their packets.
bsimpson 12y ago
Wouldn't that be wonderfully self-reinforcing? "We need to use sophisticated computers to switch our networks because we use deep packet inspection to accomplish Fuckery; therefore, we are an information service; therefore, you have to keep letting us use sophisticated computers in the name of Fuckery."

aioprisan 12y ago

In other words, this will have to be settled in court.

rsingel 12y ago
This is largely political saber rattling. AT&T's best arguments are going to be procedural. If FCC gets past arguments it didn't dot the i's, then this will go to the Supreme Court where AT&T and Verizon will get walloped. I can explain why, but basically there are 9 votes lined up against the ISPs on reclassification.
- r00fus 12y ago
  I'd love to hear why you think there are 9 votes for reclassification, btw.
dragonwriter 12y ago
Well, duh. The telecoms have sued over every previous move regarding net neutrality, and they've made it very clear that they are going to continue to do so even if the FCC does exactly what the court in the last case said they could do. No one is surprised by this, least of all the FCC Commissioners considering voting on the proposals. I suspect that Wheeler's staff already has prepared legal analyses addressing most of the issues AT&T might raise in a lawsuit. Its hardly their first rodeo.

sarciszewski 12y ago

I stopped having any sympathy for AT&T after the Auernheimer case. If they wanted to garner public support for any reason, a move like this is likely to kill it for a lot of people. Myself included. (I know Auernheimer's not well-liked, and I don't agree with his politics, but he deserved to win that case on appeal.)

mullingitover 12y ago
I read the indictment [1]. Auernheimer wasn't a white hat security researcher--he intentionally went after AT&T with intent to damage them and reap rewards from it. He's not exactly a martyr for the cause of freedom. [1] http://www.scribd.com/doc/113664772/46-Indictment http://www.scribd.com/doc/113664772/46-Indictment
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- guelo 12y ago
  An indictment is a deliberately biased, one-sided document.

cl42 12y ago

The Economist's recent article on net neutrality and common carriage is fascinating and related: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21641201-why-network-neutrality-such-intractable-problemand-how-solve-it-gordian-net http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21641201-why-network-n... Part of the interesting piece is the history of "common carriage": "The idea that certain businesses are so essential that they must not discriminate between customers is as old as ferries. With only one vessel in town, a boatman was generally not allowed to charge a butcher more than a carpenter to move goods. This concept, called 'common carriage', has served the world well, most recently on the internet." I've never doubted my support for net neutrality, and the legal history of "common carriage" makes this even more obvious.

xdissent 12y ago
But strangely the author of the Economist post concludes that the market should be left to regulate itself. Even stranger, they immediately lament the fact that it's failed to do so in the 75% of America where there is a single broadband provider. Which makes me wonder - will the FCC action do anything to expand the provider market, or merely ensure the quality of currently available access?
- toast0 12y ago
  > Which makes me wonder - will the FCC action do anything to expand the provider market, No, the provider market is unlikely to significantly expand without local loop unbundling; fair access to poles and conduit may help in some cases, but overbuilding is still going to be expensive and limited. > or merely ensure the quality of currently available access? We'll have to wait and see what falls under acceptable and unacceptable network management, to see what happens to quality.
  - cl42 12y ago
    I think there's an interesting interplay between this FCC announcement and the earlier one on classifying "broadband" connection speeds of 25 Mbps and above. If an ISP is required to abide by net neutrality and can only sell broadband when it meets the above requirement, then the FCC is essentially mandating quality and consistency of service.

shaftoe 12y ago

While I don't like Internet providers creating different classes of traffic, the idea of the government getting involved should terrify anyone who values innovation and freedom. Soon, we'll end up with a monopoly guided by regulations from lobbyists and using laws as a weapon against competition. That's hardly better than the problem we seek to resolve.

badsock 12y ago
Genuinely curious, how would you resolve the problem differently?
- aaron42net 12y ago
  The lack of provider competition isn't a natural monopoly. It's a government-created monopoly/duopoly in a given market. Instead of regulating the one or two providers in a market, we could try a different model that improves competition. One way is to do city-owned and maintained layer 1, like Chattanooga (http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/20/technology/innovation/chattanooga-internet/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/20/technology/innovation/chatta...), and sell access to as many ISPs want it. The other way is to break the city franchise model. Cities generally grant franchise rights to cable and phone companies, excluding other providers for a promise of universal coverage and a few percent of the revenue. The latter is what Google Fiber is asking for from the cities it goes into: - It wants blanket access to all of the telephone poles and other right-of-ways, without having to do per-pole applications, application fees, and approval process that can take weeks/months each. - It wants to not have to do universal access, but rather only roll into neighborhoods with a high enough density to be profitable. - It won't pay the city a percentage of revenue. Instead, it agrees to build out free internet access to schools, public spaces, etc. Google Fiber's model has the advantage of not relying on a city to properly maintain a fiber network, but the disadvantage of leaving poor communities un-served.
dasil003 12y ago
I don't think this libertarian sloganeering does anything to help. Freedom is something that individual persons deserve, not massive entrenched corporations who are throwing their weight around to prevent any innovation from happening and keep their profits fat. It's true that government intervention screws a lot of things up, but so does unrestricted capitalism. We can't solve the biggest problems of today with reductionist ideologies.

shmerl 12y ago

Instead of wasting money on courts AT&T should upgrade all their DSL lines to fiber optics, lower prices on their plans and increase bandwidth. But of course they'd rather just whine about how their monopoly is threatened by Title II. I hope they'll lose big deal. Though it wouldn't help anything of the above anyway, since even with Title II AT&T won't be facing much competition. They'd be just more limited in ways they can abuse their monopoly.

droopybuns 12y ago
If you develop a successful business plan selling pineapples- and then a regulator comes in and says that assumptions x, y, & z are no longer legal- why would a business owner decide not to "waste money" on courts? Is it not obvious that the best reason to do so is that you've made investments based on a set of assumptions that have a longer horizon than the next 6 months? The courts exist to provide relief in the case of a conflict. Without them, the only conflict solution is violence. If a company has invested billions in network upgrades and has a regulator come in and upset the apple cart- it's either cheaper to accept it or it's disastrous. I know the appeal of hyperbole, but apply occam's razor. Why would they 'waste money' on the courts? Swapping copper for fiber requires expensive trench digging. Planning upgrades costs billions. Monopoly is a word which you are misusing. Verizon is the leading wireless ISP in the country. Comcast is the leading wireline ISP in the country. Centurylink is a dominant force in ISP delivery.
- shmerl 12y ago
  > If you develop a successful business plan selling pineapples- and then a regulator comes in and says that assumptions x, y, & z are no longer legal- why would a business owner decide not to "waste money" on courts? Now change pineapples to air and consider a colony on some remote asteroid. Do you get the idea better? > Monopoly is a word which you are misusing. Verizon is the leading wireless ISP in the country. Comcast is the leading wireline ISP in the country. Centurylink is a dominant force in ISP delivery. It's not misused. Monopoly is clearly present in areas where there is no choice between all those options you listed (for example for landline Internet). Only few places have multiple choices. And even then they are often colluded - i.e agree with each other not to compete in order to prevent lowering prices and spending money on improving the service. So those cases for users are essentially a monopoly anyway, even if formally they have "choices".

Tiksi 12y ago

"I have no illusions that any of this will change what happens on February 26," when the FCC is expected to vote, AT&T Federal Regulatory VP Hank Hultquist wrote in a blog post yesterday. "But when the FCC has to defend reclassification before an appellate court, it will have to grapple with these and other arguments. " I might be misreading something, but is he not saying "We know this is useless but we want to waste the FCC's time and resources anyways" ? I'm not familiar with how lawsuits for these kinds of cases work, but wouldn't this be enough for a judge to throw away any lawsuit they file? If they clearly state t hey have no intention other than to get in the way, it doesn't seem like a valid lawsuit to me.

Alupis 12y ago
> I might be misreading something, but is he not saying "We know this is useless but we want to waste the FCC's time and resources anyways" ? No, he's simply saying this prior release is not going to influence the FCC vote in any way, shape or form on Feb 26th. However, a court battle after-wards might (as it did previously with the FCC National Broadband Act and the courts ultimately ruled the FCC had no authority to do what they proposed).
- Tiksi 12y ago
  Ah, alright, thanks for the clarification, I guess I did misread it.
wmf 12y ago
He's saying that the threat of lawsuit isn't enough to prevent the FCC from going through with the reclassification, so they're going to wait for it to happen and then sue to overturn the FCC's decision.

jasonjei 12y ago

I hope the FCC has the balls to say, "So sue me."

skywhopper 12y ago

AT&T's argument appears to be that since they are already shaping traffic and abusing their customer's trust, they aren't actually an Internet service provider anyway, so they can't be regulated as one.