There will be consequences.
Although Net Neutrality rules were eliminated a few moments ago by the Republicans, there still is a rule that ISPs need to reveal the exact ways in which they have chosen to stick it to us. We can then, with that information, stick it back to them. The best hope now is that when we do so, we do it hard. Advertisement buyers, producers of conent, etc. that use these ISPs selectively, or this information have to be shut down, protested, boycotted, that sort of thing. An medium term solution is to always be ready to switch providers to the lesser of the various evils, but that is costly and difficult.
Most effective will be a zero tolerance voting pattern. Anyone running for Congress who does not explicitly embrace net neutrality has to be voted against, no matter what. This whole problem will be fixed in two years or so when the Republican party is effectively ended after this long reign of stupidity and terror. But for now, when they annoy us we annoy them back times ten.
Ready?
I actually suspect they backroom dynamics on this will cause very little to happen until after the 2018 midterms, because the powers that be know that if they do too much now the Republican Party will be ended in November 2018.
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
Advertising consumes much of the bandwidth of general internet usage. Not sure how that volume compares to, for instance, video services. But, as a start, perhaps internet advertisers can be engaged. If only by the ‘if your ads eat significant bandwidth, we won’t buy your products or visit the sites you advertise on.’
The hypocrisy in this whole process has been astounding. The often repeated argument that this is to get the federal government out of things goes up against the new rules forbidding states to make plans or set up services.
Pai stated that the opinions of people opposing the move didn’t matter (in fact, blamed much of the opposition on Twitter and Facebook) but referenced the roughly 2 million emails he said they’d received in support of the change — and continued to do that after analyses of those emails in favor showed that more than 75% of them were from fake IP addresses and used fake human identities. Finally, there were his comments about doing this to give more freedom to internet companies to work while saying that some of them (Google and Facebook) should be reigned in and forced to represent more conservative voices.
All in the same vein of “never trust any libertarian”.
The rules have only been in place for a few years. Where was all this damage the companies were doing before that?
Was Netflix shut down by Comcast? Will they now shut down Hulu to appease their new partner Netflix?
“The rules have only been in place for a few years. Where was all this damage the companies were doing before that?”
As usual, ignorance. The regulation enforcing net neutrality was put in place because net neutrality, which was how the net had operated since the very beginning, was being threatened by large cable companies who offer ISP services. In other words, the net neutrality regulation was put in place to cement the status quo in place before companies like Verizon, the current chairman’s previous employer, moved to abandon it.
Pay attention.
MADISON RIVER: In 2005, North Carolina ISP Madison River Communications blocked Vonage. Vonage filed a complaint with the FCC after receiving a slew of customer complaints. Stopped by the FCC then — that ability is gone now.
COMCAST: In 2005, the nation’s largest ISP, Comcast, began secretly blocking peer-to-peer tech – something that its customers had been using over its network. Users of services like BitTorrent and Gnutella were unable to connect to these services. 2007 investigations from the Associated Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others confirmed that Comcast was indeed blocking or slowing file-sharing applications without disclosing this fact to its customers.
AT&T: From 2007–2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skeype block Skype and other competing VOIP phone services on the iPhone. ATT’s goal was to prevent iPhone users from using any application that would allow them to make calls on such “over-the-top” voice services. The same thing was done with Google Voice when it first appeared in 2009.
Google Wallet: AT&T, SPRINT and VERIZON: From 2011–2013, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon blocked Google Wallet because it competed with a similar service called Isis, which all three companies had a stake in developing.
VERIZON: In 2012, the FCC found that Verizon was violating an pledge it had made to the FCC in 2008 as part of its participation in an airwaves auction. Verizon was
blocking customers from using tethering applications on their phones (that was a direct violation of what they had pledged).
AT&T: In 2012 announce it would disable FaceTime on its customer’s iPhones unless they
upgraded to a more expensive plan.
In 2013, in oral arguments (Verizon v. FCC), Verizon’s counsel Helgi Walker was asked whether the company would favor some company over others if the (then) existing internet rules were dropped. Helgi said “I’m authorized to state from my client today that but for these rules would would be exploring those types of arrangements.” Walker repeated that five different times during oral arguments.
Net neutrality did not exist in 2005, so how did the FCC stop them?
https://www.wired.com/story/what-an-internet-analyst-got-wrong-about-net-neutrality/
Gee you’d think someone really interested in the answer would do at least a minimum of research
Amongst other atrocities mention in that article there was this
Think they won’t interfere in politics again – think again
Douglas Alder, YouTube, FaceBook, Google, Apple, Twitter and others are censoring people for views they don’t like. Ajit Pai’s video on net neutrality got taken down by YouTube after a bogus copyright complaint that the holder admitted he made because he supported net neutrality. Daily Caller brought attention to it and managed to get the video back up later.
“Although Net Neutrality rules were eliminated a few moments ago by the Republicans, there still is a rule that ISPs need to reveal the exact ways in which they have chosen to stick it to us. We can then, with that information, stick it back to them.”
Greg, if that is an FCC rule, the first ISP to challenge it in court will get it struck down. The reason we had Title II regulation was because the courts told the FCC it could not regulate ISPs without it. The notion that they will be able to do some minimal regulation does not look to be legally well-founded.
That will be an interesting fight, then.
Remember that the enforcement gig is being shifted to the FTC, despite its chairman saying that group doesn’t have the expertise to do it.
Is the strategy to so tangle up the path to redress that most everyone with a grievance drops out?
I don’t know that there is any strategy other than
a) To undo all the successful things that happened under the previous president because, of course, he wasn’t white
b) Demonstrate a complete lack of concern for consumers
I don’t even think these morons are stupid enough to believe in the mythical “free market” — but they know their supporters are stupid enough to believe in it.
Dean, your counterexamples are Madison River which was resolved without net neutrality rules in place, though perhaps that was because it was due to how DSL was classified at the time, Comcast’s blocking of BitTorrent which is the only exception I was aware of and something I’m OK with, and a whole bunch of cell phone issues. Maybe there’s a case to be made, but if people are dumb enough to pay hundreds of dollars a year for a cell phone, I’m not going to care about the deals the cell phone networks make for the data networks.
https://youtu.be/-Fyiv1LvR-A
BitTorrent which is the only exception I was aware of and something I’m OK with
Why?
It’s almost entirely illegal pirating of videos, and last I saw(many years ago), this was a very significant percentage of internet traffic.
“though perhaps that was because it was due to how DSL was classified at the time”. The laws regulating telephone companies (DSL is delivered over twisted-pair telephone lines) don’t apply to cable companies like Comcast.