> Its chairman has long argued against the rules, pointing out that before they were put into effect in 2015, service providers had not engaged in any of the practices the rules prohibited<p>That's because those practices were prohibited by the 2010 rules. There was only a year between the court striking down the 2010 rules in early 2014 and the FCC adopting the 2015 rules in early 2015.<p>The court that overturned the 2010 rules <i>told</i> the FCC how they could fix them, and the FCC got to work on that right away, so the ISPs <i>knew</i> that replacement rules would come out soon. Of course no sane ISP made any changes during that year.
Kudos to the NYT for leading with an accessible and informative description of the discriminatory consequences of the repeal of net neutrality, rather than the nonsensical, meaningless, and ultimately harmful "it will allow ISPs to charge more for faster service!" line that is often parroted by the media.
I do not look forward to having to pay for a "performance gaming" or "performance VPN" or "awesome streaming video" package...<p>I have one ISP in my area that offers speeds above 5m consistently :(
> Its chairman has long argued against the rules, pointing out that before they were put into effect in 2015, service providers had not engaged in any of the practices the rules prohibited.<p>But this is a bald-faced lie, and the proof is in the public record; while there was en evolving approach to enforcing the open internet principles prior to the 2015 Title II rules (in large part because the prior approaches were struck down by the courts, forcing changes in approach), there is a long line of enforcement actions by the FCC against ISPs for actions that would be in violation of the 2015 rules. ISPs blocking legal P2P traffic, ISPs blocking legal VoIP services, etc.
"Its chairman has long argued against the rules, pointing out that before they were put into effect in 2015, service providers had not engaged in any of the practices the rules prohibited."<p>That begs the question: Why then do they oppose the rules if only to start engaging in the practices they prohibit?
I feel very happy to be a Canadian right now. The CRTC's (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) laws on net neutrality are considered to be some of the strictest laws in the world.<p>Here is a great quote from a 2017 music streaming case requiring all data to be counted against a user's data cap, regardless of its source:<p>"the aim [of] the decision was to encourage Internet service providers to compete on price, speed and network quality instead of acting as a gatekeeper." - Chairman of the CRTC, Jean-Pierre Blais
> “The United States is simply making a shift from pre-emptive regulation, which foolishly presumes that every last wireless company is an anti-competitive monopolist” Mr. Pai said<p>So clearly we have no established precedent(1) of this sort of behavior in the past and happening again before our very eyes.
Suggesting that these rules were conjured out of hysteria is not only wrong, it's insulting. But that's to be expected from a corporate shill.<p>(1) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System</a>
I want to take the devils advocate position here and ask: why shouldn't a vendor be allowed to charge more for tiered service? With FANG and other tech companies sitting on so much cash, why cant they build out competing networks if the prices get too high or the services they want to deliver require them? Wont the consumer benefit from this?
How I plan to protest. I'll use as little internet as possible if need be. I'll not upgrade to any expensive "special package".<p>I'll support municipal broadband and will volunteer time and efforts even for cities not near me.
Welp, the Senate did what they could to overturn this. Thanks House of Reps <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/16/611598361/senate-approves-overturning-fccs-net-neutrality-repeal" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/16/611598361...</a>
Will our institutions be incompetent under this administration? Maybe.
Can they be incompetent, period? Sure, its like swinging a dead cat and hitting the target.
Checkout exhibit A: <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/us-immigration-agency-will-lose-millions-process-visas-fast-enough" rel="nofollow">https://www.propublica.org/article/us-immigration-agency-wil...</a>
I'm having a hard time finding a link to the results of congressional votes related to net neutrality. Does anyone know which politicians voted for it, and which against? Which party did most of the pro-neutrality politicians belong to, and which party did most of the anti-net neutrality politicians belong to? I'm eager to vote for pro-NN politicians, so I'd like to know.
If the United States want's to compete with other nations...its best bet is to have an informed population. An internet where information is on a pay to play basis will cut out the poor and weakest links...leaving a massive portion of the population under-informed. How does this make sense in a national security capacity?? Completely backwards .
Let the deconstruction of the Internet begin! "And with your Internet package, which search engine would like? ... And which streaming services? ... Oh, Netflix is only available in our premium package which will cost $20 more a month..."
The proper rules are Congress writing updated laws for the internet and VOIP (and then letting the proper agency/ies regulate them) but of course they're too out of touch and bought-off to make anything sensible.
Naive question: is it foreseeable that Google or someone else could take advantage of 5G technology and we could all just abandon cable/DSL companies and handle all our data needs wirelessly?
<i>> “The United States is simply making a shift from pre-emptive regulation, which foolishly presumes that every last wireless company is an anti-competitive monopolist” Mr. Pai said</i><p>No need to presume. Most of ISPs are. So US is making a shift from having some (not even sufficient) safeguards, to letting those monopolists abuse their monopolistic position to fleece their users left and right and limit their choices. Too much weasel wording Mr. Pai?
As usual, the republicans work against the will and simply against the American people. The environment, the Internet, the economy. Just vote the SOBs out next time around, please.
I am surprised that no one on HN is discussing what I consider an important point of the repeal, namely clipping the wings if the federal government (a good thing), and letting states decide for themselves how they want to regulate internet access. Heck, I'd even be in favour of this being regulated at the municipal level, to curtail state power.
I think what we'll really see in practice is this being used for political purposes, with pressure groups getting ISPs to block so-called "hate" or "extremist" sites.<p>The stuff about service tiers seems less likely and less concerning.
It will be interesting to see whether American and European views of the internet converge or diverge in the long term. I've noticed that American norms tend to flow towards the old world, and the reverse is rarely true, the GDPR being the most impressive counter-example I've seen.<p>Or perhaps we will all move towards something similar to the Chinese model?
I'm interested in whether one of the two extreme sides of this debate will admit they were wrong when their prediction doesn't pan out.<p>Either we wind up with a tiered, cable package style internet or we don't. I'm in the "we won't" camp", but I'm also more disturbed by the monopolistic nature of ISP's that the regulations emboldened.
Incorrect title. Americans thave opted out of net neutrality. We canadians are keeping it, so too many other countries. It is still a thing for much/most of the world. Title should reflect that this is happing in only one country.<p>The rest of us are watching rome burn. We would like to help put out the fire, but the romans seem intent on burning down thier own houses. Just over half of them seems rather happy about the situation. The rest arent putting up much of a fight.