Leading Lobbying Group for Amazon, Facebook, Google and Other Tech Giants is Joining the Legal Battle To Restore Net Neutrality (recode.net) 77
A leading lobbying group for Amazon, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Twitter and other tech giants said Friday that it would be joining the coming legal crusade to restore the U.S. government's net neutrality rules. From a report: The Washington, D.C.-based Internet Association specifically plans to join a lawsuit as an intervening party, aiding the challenge to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's vote in December to repeal regulations that required internet providers like AT&T and Comcast to treat all web traffic equally, its leader confirmed to Recode. Technically, the Internet Association isn't filing its own lawsuit. That task will fall to companies like Etsy, public advocates like Free Press and state attorneys general, all of which plan to contend they are most directly harmed by Pai's decision, as Recode first reported this week. As an intervener, though, the Internet Association still will play a crucial role, filing legal arguments in the coming case. And in formally participating, tech giants will have the right to appeal a judge's decision later if Silicon Valley comes out on the losing end. "The final version of Chairman Pai's rule, as expected, dismantles popular net neutrality protections for consumers," said the group's chief, Michael Beckerman, in a statement. "This rule defies the will of a bipartisan majority of Americans and fails to preserve a free and open internet."
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Too many laws may be a problem, but it is not solved by eliminating the good ones.
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NN has nothing to do with the law. That's the problem.
Only Winners Are the Lawyers (Score:2)
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The quantity of laws and regulations is only an issue for know-nothings and demagogues. This issue is their quality, and that must be assessed on an individual basis.
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The quantity of laws and regulations is only an issue for know-nothings and demagogues.
This is not true at all when the legal system places responsibility for knowledge of the law on the people ("ignorance of the law is no excuse") but the number of laws are so immense that no single human could possibly know and be aware of every law or even the majority.
The US government itself has spent literally millions attempting to ascertain the number of just Federal laws alone, and failed. This doesn't even consider all the State, county, city, township, etc etc laws, ordinances, and regulations To e
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The FCC did it for phones, who would you put in charge of inter-state communications technology practices?
Also no more of "up to speeds of 300mbts", they should not be allowed to advertise burst speeds, but only the steady state download speeds.
It was never just burst speeds. It was also in the absence of congestion at the first hop node (still inside of the last mile). There is no reason not to oversell bandwidth, provided you'll get relatively close most of the time. It only becomes a problem if you will usually not or never get the advertised speed. The same as it's OK that there isn't a 1:1 correlation between cell tower capacity and r
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Mobiles are under title 4, and carriers already have multiple speed (fast lane) tiers. T-Mobile offers free and unlimited with its binge on service. FCC is not stopping from fast lanes or unlimited services. T-Mobile is also offering netflix for its customers.
Mobiles and sat are not comparable to fiber and cable for FCC control, FCC handles the airwaves, local government handle the land. FCC mostly controlled local ISP's on regulation for services, not with access. ACCESS is the problem, we got monopo
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Mobiles are under title 4, and carriers already have multiple speed (fast lane) tiers.
Speed tiers are NOT what Net Neutrality advocates are talking about when they refer to "fast lanes". When you purchase faster internet service, that speed applies to every bit that comes through the pipe. Fast lanes are about giving some bits priority over others based on source and content. Think Comcast slowing Netflix content because it competes with their own streaming service, or Century Link throttling Skype to give their own videocom service a competitive advantage.
Re: Try not through the FCC ffs (Score:3)
The simple solution is to force a break up of the monopolies.
You can either be an ISP or a content provider, but not both. This will nip that whole conflict of interests thing right in the bud.
Start talking divestiture vs Net Neutrality and watch how fast the big boys back off and become NN champions.
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sometimes the interests of an amazon (etc) can be the same as mine.
what I can say is that anything the R's want, is NOT what I want. they are doing all they can to fuck the common person over and if allying with an amazon will help fight the evil R's, fine.
I don't think for a minute amazon is my friend; but if they can do battle for something I believe in, fine. no one else in the gov is lifting a finger to help us out. I'll take the help when and where I can get it.
(OT: I kind of like referring to those
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Either way the bill is going up
But not because they didn't have the spare profit margin. But because it's made national news and everyone knows it costs money.
I would prefer the government agency that controls what words are allowed on television not be involved in regulating the internet.
Spectrum is limited. When it was divided up Americans agreed that it was in the public interest to have content that was acceptable to most Americans. What you might call censorship is really just selection - encouraging content providers to produce what people want. If this wasn't what Americans wanted, there would be more of a push to change that. And there are so many alter
Re:The user is going to pay in any case (Score:5, Insightful)
I strongly disagree about getting rid of net neutrality. We NEED net neutrality. A neutral internet is what allows it to become the global economic engine that it is. Now ISPs want to erect troll booths and non neutral traffic.
Suppose AT&T goes to Netflix and strikes up an ugly smoke-filled back room deal where Netflix pays AT&T so that Netflix customers on AT&T get "zero rated" or "preferred" or whatever you want to call it. This increases Netflix's cost. That cost will go to ALL Netflix customers even Netflix customers who use Verizon instead of AT&T. Thus Netflix customers on Verizon are now subsidizing the improved service of Netflix customers on AT&T -- while those Netflix-Verizon customers continue to have the poorer service.
So now HBO strikes up a deal with Verizon so HBO gets "zero rated" service on Verizon. Similarly HBO customers using AT&T are now subsidizing HBO-Verizon customers.
How about this: BAN this practice. If the ISP needs to build more infrastructure to handle Netflix, then CHARGE ME THE CUSTOMER for how much internet bandwidth I use. I'm going to pay for it anyway. But make it simple. Make it fair. Stop making some users subsidize other users.
There is no such thing as "building fast lanes". That is just a euphemism for building SLOW lanes. If an ISP is building out its infrastructure, then that ISP's customers should pay for what they are using that requires that infrastructure.
Finally, this "fast lanes" approach also helps cement in the established players while making it difficult for new entrants into the market. Suppose a new obscure specialized video service emerged. One whose content is mostly about the mating practices of obese new jersey millennials. The small subscriber base for this particular video service may not be powerful enough to strike a crooked back room deal with AT&T, thus resulting in it getting unfair treatment -- even though their end subscribers pay the same local ISP bill as everyone else.
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If there is free and open routing of packets, then you are perfectly free to connect to (or even create!) an online forum whose echo chambers are more to your liking.
A free and open internet means that just because you create a small site that people are unable to reach it because you cannot afford to strike special "zero rated" deals with AT&T.
Personally I would much rather have competition (Score:3, Insightful)
An AT&T rep knocked on my door a couple weeks ago to announce they were rolling out fiber to my area, and were expecting pricing to be around $45/mo. Competition fixes both abusive pricing and throttling. If my ISP decides to throttle Netflix for not paying them, and I have a choice of ISPs, all I have to do is switch ISPs to one which doesn't throttle Netflix. The problem net neutrality is trying to solve is entirely caused by these government-granted cable/phone monopolies. (AT&T is only able to offer broadband in my area because they're the local phone monopoly.)
So I would rather have the solution which eliminates both artificial throttling and abusing pricing - competition. The gas and power utilities even provide the model for doing this. You hire a company to build and maintain the distribution wires or pipes going to each home. That company is paid to maintain those lines/pipes, but is prohibited from selling service (gas, electricity, Internet) over them. Instead, they sell access rights to those lines/pipes (at a fixed price regulated by a Public Utilities Commission) to other companies which provide the service. This lets hundreds or even thousands of companies compete against each other to sell you gas, electricity, or Internet service. Thus insuring anyone trying to price gouge you or degrade your service as part of their petty extortion schemes simply puts themselves out of business.
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This works in my area. I'm in a fairly rural area in Washington State, but still have 12mbps DSL, 120mbps cable, two wireless providers (45mbps) and fiber (up to 1gbps). The fiber is provided by the local power authority on their power poles, but our fiber isp is a different company. We have 12 fiber isp's we can choose from, all with different plans and speeds.
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The problem net neutrality is trying to solve is entirely caused by these government-granted cable/phone monopolies.
Bullpucky. The problem is the barriers to entry (for the last mile).
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Only for the first few months while they're still actively trying to recruit customers from the other guy. After a while, a duopoly still settles down and becomes approximately the same as a monopoly, because everybody wants to provide the minimum amount of service they can get away with for as much mo
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I'd rather a nonprofit, regulated duopoly (or even monopoly), thanks. There's no reason I can see why that should be inferior to competition. Just increase the required speeds that they have to perform from time to time.
What do all those companies have in common (Score:2)
They are all owned by multi billionaires.
I doubt they are lobbying to save the consumer money.
So wait... (Score:2, Insightful)
we're all for corporate interests lobbying for laws ?
And Google and Facebook of all places lobbying for "Neutrality" of packets, while at the same time being biased in their handling of their user generated content platforms ?
The Slashdot crowd cheering for this really has lost it if they think any of this is in their best interest.
Re:So wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
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There is no public good in having more and more governement intervention in the Internet. We need even less. Remove monopolies from Telcos/Cable companies, repeal Net Neutrality rules. Let the corporations compete to give you the best and cheapest Internet.
Forcing them to do it will only result in more and more and more rules being made, and upping the barrier of entry into the market for smaller businesses wanting to provide good Internet service.
Re:So wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let the corporations compete to give you the best and cheapest Internet.
Ahahahahahaha
Wait. You were serious... Maybe you haven't noticed, but Internet service providers in the United States have been behaving like an illegal cartel for two decades now, since the inception of the public Internet. They're not going to compete no matter how you change the rules. They don't have to, they don't want to, and because of the difficulty and expense of deploying that last mile, it's effectively a natural monopoly. Not quite as natural as water and sewer, but enough that you can expect the current behavior to always evolve, absent rules to the contrary.
Removing all the rules does not make things better. The right rules make things better. Net Neutrality is a right and necessary rule, because competition will always be absent.
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There is no public good in having more and more governement intervention in the Internet.
I'm amazed by how poorly educated people are on this stuff. Like you can say "government intervention", and rubes suck it up. The problem with "pure" competition over the last mile of infrastructure is: barriers to entry. You even know what that means? You even know that net neutrality was the de facto standard since the 1980s?
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The problem with "pure" competition over the last mile of infrastructure is: barriers to entry
Because of *drumroll*, governement granted monopolies. You know, more regulations we could repeal.
You'll make a fine Republican someday, you're almost there!
You even know that net neutrality was the de facto standard since the 1980s?
You even know that the FCC regulations being repealed are from 2015 ? You even know that Clinton era regulations that we're going back to date back to 1996 ?
It's funny you bring up 1980. You know, the days when the Internet was unregulated, in an attempt to discredit my "Don't regulate the Internet" post. You ended up solidifying my position.
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The problem is, who's the good guy? The answer is Neither. Both want money and both will find innovative ways to get it.
I started thinking about what Pai was trying to do outside of the "Verizon shill" argument and realized that the FCC in the end only could enforce Net neutrality on one side of the data; The ISP side. They could do nothing if a content provider decided to throttle an ISP's customers in order to extort money from the ISP.
Basically it comes down to this:
If Comcast throttled Netflix to try to
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Why would content providers cripple their own services? For what gain?
Dunno, ask Netflix. They literally did what the parent was saying to AT&T and Verizon customers just 2 years ago. Also, there was that little thing about throttling Comcast to force them to provide free hosting for a "Netflix box", not to mention the throttling Cogent, Netflix's ISP, did that got blamed on Telcos and Cable providers.
If you really think Content providers aren't up to shenanigans themselves, you're deluded. Both sides are as bad. Regulations that only apply to one side are equally as
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Why would content providers cripple their own services? For what gain?
Dunno, ask Netflix. They literally did what the parent was saying to AT&T and Verizon customers just 2 years ago.
Wait... are we talking about AT&T/Verizon, or are we talking about AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless here? They're two entirely different networks. If you think Netflix throttled their content to wired AT&T or wired Verizon, then your information is factually incorrect. Netflix did, however, deliberately limit the maximum video quality to cellular customers on those networks so that their users wouldn't pay a small fortune in data charges. After some complaints, they added controls in the a
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That's what we in the rural South used to call "cutting off your nose to spite your face", and is essentially the corporate equivalent of suicide.
If Netflix throttles access to Comcast customers, the only possible results would be either A. causing more Netflix users to complain to Comcast or B. causing customers to ditch Netflix for somebody else. Even if
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Basically, there's no plausible scenario where a non-ISP content provider could cause harm to an ISP by throttling data from that ISP
Bullshit.
Apparently you've never heard of a Carriage Dispute. [wikipedia.org] so let me visualize it for you...
1) Netflix decides it wants to charge ISP's like Viacom and CBS charge CableCo's for retransmission.
2) Netflix Throttles all Comcast streams to 480P or less. Tells customers to call Comcast to complain about speeds.
3) Customers Bitch at Comcast because they can't watch "Stranger Things" in HD.
4) Comcast checks their bandwidth, looks ok. Contacts Netflix to see what going on. Netflix tells Comcast to pay us $100 Mi
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There actually is a straightforward and appealing pro-market case to make here and it could attract many (R)s...
Only the one that is of the same magnitude as the forced breakup of Ma Bell. If the government decrees that last mile providers must be broken out of their current respective corporate ownership into fully independent organizations regulated like utilities that must accept all comers who want to provide the Internet part of Internet service, then yes, it's a straightforward and appealing pro-market case.
Which can not possibly attract any (R)s at all, because what massive incumbent corporations want is sacr
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There actually is a straightforward and appealing pro-market case to make here and it could attract many (R)s, but unfortunately our technology giants are so wrapped around their PC politics axle that courting an (R) to come over to their side is as yet unthinkable; they played hardball social issues politics for years and now they're in the cold.
It's worse than that Amazon, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Twitter all donate only to Democrats. And Comcast et al donate heavily to Republicans.
So the Republicans will say they oppose 'government regulation of the Internet'. However they Don't seem to mind the local regulations that gives Comcast a monopoly on selling high speed internet service.
Meanwhile the Democrats say they want a free and open Internet and Net Neutrality by which they mean 'title II regulation of ISPs'. However they're happy with Google
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I should say they voted to remove an administrative rule. You can't sue to put it back into place.
Yes you can. There are rules about rule-making, in order to prevent capricious, expensive changes. This change may not have been done according to the rules. Lawyers are arguing about it now, and it looks like they have a case, as it hasn't been dismissed by the judge yet.
stop this. Allow NN to die. (Score:2)