Pretty impressed with the negativity here. Just a year ago, I remember all the stories on HN with people lamenting that the FCC doesn't have the guts to regulate broadband as a utility under title II [1,2,3] (admittedly with a minority speaking against title II, most prominently rayiner, whose comments I generally look forward to for an interesting contrarian view).<p>Y Combinator even published an open letter[4]. Quoting:<p><i>Title II of the Communications Act seems the most appropriate way to properly define broadband ISPs to be offering telecommunications. Speaking on behalf of Y Combinator, I’m urging you to adopt such a rule.</i><p>And here we are. It seems to me that the community has always been complaining about the different FCC approaches on the subject, and in favor of title II, until the FCC yielded. Politicians must think the tech community is a frustrating beast to work with.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7750036" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7750036</a><p>[2] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7057634" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7057634</a><p>[3] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637147" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637147</a><p>[4] <a href="http://blog.ycombinator.com/y-combinator-has-filed-an-official-comment-with-the-fcc" rel="nofollow">http://blog.ycombinator.com/y-combinator-has-filed-an-offici...</a>
The major critique quoted here comes from David Farber of Carnegie-Mellon, who worries that classifying Internet access under Title II will allow it to be taxed.<p>If that's the worst thing you can think of, we're in good shape.
To me, net neutrality is pretty much a red herring.<p>I have had good and bad internet service in my life. The least reliable was at my somewhat rural childhood home from TWC.<p>The best is my current connection from that most reviled of companies, Comcast. I have had no service interruptions, and I get a reliable 50Mbps at all times of day (I check regularly with speed tests and checking Torrent activity).<p>The reason my internet service (and customer service experience) has been so good here is that I have two viable alternative providers, a high speed DSL carrier offering similar speeds and rates in the city, and a local fiber provider (recently introduced 10Gbps connection - yes you are reading that correctly).<p>While I would prefer to have no rate limiting based on usage or content, I don't view this as some inalienable right. There is a price I'm willing to pay for that service, but there is also a price low enough where I'm happy to accept rate limiting. I'd like to have the choice.<p>The problem seems to be that the competition which gives me the service I'm happy with and the regulation regarding whether I am even allowed to reason about my preferences as in the above paragraph keep getting tied up with one another.<p>To me the biggest benefit comes from having multiple options in providers. A legal monopoly who can't do rate limiting can still give me awful service. Many providers who can rate limit will most likely give me service I'm happy with, even if the plan is rate limited.<p>The history of utility regulation is rife with cases of legally enforced monopolies.
Law does not operate in a vacuum because, in the end, it is closely tied to power - to fine, to jail, to sanction, to regulate and restrict - and that makes it scary when it becomes unhinged from a sense of principle in its application.<p>Is it wise, then, to grant unchecked, plenary power over the internet to the government in the name of trusting that those who currently exercise the F.C.C.'s power will exercise that power with self-imposed restraint? Lord Acton's dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely comes to mind in considering the implications of this step. Once we grant that the F.C.C. has open-ended authority to do what it wants with the internet, where is the formal protection against abuse and who will exercise it. Certainly the courts will not. The Telecommunications Act being relied upon here certainly grants the formal authority to do this. Those who passed that Act did so 80 years ago and never contemplated that it would be so applied. But the courts will say, it was for Congress to make the law and for the appointed agency to administer it within the bounds laid out by the legislature, and that means this exercise of authority will be upheld. But so too will any attempt by the F.C.C. to impose detailed regulations over pricing, usage, and all sorts of other areas that those who favor a free and open internet clearly do not desire. Once this step is taken, all formal protections against abuses of this type are gone. What, then, is the remaining form of protection. It is that we choose to trust those who exercise open-ended power to use "restraint." They assure us they would never change the way things are. They will never succumb to the power and influence of lobbyists. They will never exercise so vast a power that is given to them without checks for any corrupt motive. After all, governments worldwide and throughout history have demonstrated that they can be trusted with unchecked power without abusing their citizens. And so we can all rest easily knowing that our benign government is and will always remain in good hands and will always keeps its promise. After all, who needs the formal protections of the rule of law when you can give all over to the discretion of leaders who will be wielding the very powers whose potential abuse we all fear. So, for those who want net neutrality at any cost, the end justifies the means and any fear in principle of giving unchecked theoretical power to an unaccountable governmental agency goes out the window in pursuit of the immediate goal of net neutrality and in trusting current leaders who tell us that they really never intend to use all those unchecked powers. I truly hope that is so but I am very saddened that people never learn the lessons of history about what can happen when political leaders suddenly find themselves with vast amounts of unchecked power.<p>The free internet we know today will be utterly dependent on their good graces. I for one am not so sanguine as others about where this may lead.
As a libertarian who knows tech, I'm on the government's side here, although I'm grimacing while I'm supporting them. It's simply the lesser of two evils.<p>One thing to help clarify the debate if you're talking to somebody who opposes this move: do not confuse the issue of how the government should be treating utilities in general with whether or not the internet <i>is</i> a utility. We can have a grand old time debating the overreach of a regulatory statist society, but that has got jack squat to do with the issue at hand. Is the internet more like electricity, where you pay so much for a bucketful, and then you can do whatever you want with it? Or is it more like Star Wars, where George Lucas and Disney can charge us 17 times at 17 different rates for different versions of what is essentially the same thing? These are two different discussions to be had; do not let folks conflate them into one.
Setting aside the ultimate politics and ramifications of this, it is interesting (and kind of scary) to watch the fight between a non-elected bureaucracy and our elected house of representatives to regulate the internet.<p>Congress seems to be completely incapable of doing more than grandstanding, while the bureaucrats may wind up dramatically increasing their own power with a single stroke of their unelected pens.<p>It's no wonder we have many times more regulations than laws in this country... If I got to 'regulate' who I had power over on a regular basis, there are a lot of people who would suddenly find themselves inexplicably under Title Darren. Human nature.
I understand the desire to regulate the internet as a utility, but are they going to actually regulate it like a utility or are they going to call it a common carrier and then just make up a few BS rules that need to be followed.<p>I have a sinking feeling that all this will result in is a situation where monopolies are given out to the existing players and no one is forced to do anything to upgrade the existing service.<p>This isn't like a water utility where the product has little variance. Even now in the marketplace there is huge variance in the quality of the product I can buy ( I am one of the lucky few with choices of providers ). I have a feeling my area is just going to get given a blanket monopoly to Comcast and I will have to deal with a crappy connection forever with no hope of another company ever gaining traction to replace them.
One part of me hates this because the idea of our government dipping their hands into what has become the major source of information, entertainment, conducting business, etc. is quite scary. We all know their tendency to fuck things up because of politics, money, stupidity, or a combination of any and all of these.<p>On the other hand, I look at my other utilities and realize I have absolutely no complaints. Yeah, the power goes out from time to time, but that is just an inconvenience. As it stands, my internet is just as reliable as my power in terms of outages (not including the occasional speed fluctuation).<p>As long as it doesn't turn into a pay for use type deal and sticks with the current model of pay for bandwidth I suppose I'd be ok with this. There are just too many different moving parts for the cynical and rational parts of my brain to agree on.<p>Edit: Oh, and as long as censorship never becomes a thing.
What a coincidence; I just posted this to my Facebook feed yesterday:<p>Dealing with ISPs (and mobile providers, for that matter) is a never-ending hell of time-sucking and abysmal customer service. Communications as a business has some unfortunate features that drive its pathologies. The overhead of the infrastructure is very high and the marginal cost for adding a customer is relatively low. When there's more than one option, there's very little practical difference to distinguish the competitors from each other. Whether it's wireless or wired, I suspect we're doomed to be subjected to this kind of bullshit until the businesses in question are treated and regulated as the basic utilities that they have become. I don't know anyone who's frustrated with their electrical or gas service.
Does anyone know if this would impact the issues we saw between Netflix, Level3 and Verizon? My understanding of the original issues with Netflix and Verizon was that the interconnect between Netflix's peering company (Level 3) and Verizon wasn't big enough to handle the bandwidth that Netflix was attempting to pump out.<p>In this case, Verizon was just refusing to upgrade that path and wanted to force Netflix to connect with them directly (get them to pay more money in some way.<p>Is that the general problem Netflix had with Verizon? If so, how would Title II help this situation? Does Title II require these various companies to maintain the interconnects between their networks and other companies out there?
That's a peculiar choice of word for an article title. The FCC can't "regulate the Internet." The FCC can regulate service providers in the US in certain limited ways.
I wonder if autonomous local mesh networks and hyper local mesh networks which is essentially a network of networks would fall under the term "Internet" and under these regulations. That would certainly stop innovation on that front (?)
I get what they're trying to accomplish, we all want faster more reliable service, but as comparison is anyone 100% happy with their utility (power, water, etc)?<p>That's where this is headed.
The real solution to all this is more competition. Stop the states from suing cities to prevent them from implementing municipal fiber. Open up the field to companies like Google to come in and partner with cities who can provide the last mile, competing with businesses. Even libertarians should say, "well, a city is a large organization and a giant corporation is a large organization, and both are kind of monopolies at this point..."
Probably way too late to get noticed here, but while I think the THREAT of Title II might be useful to keep ISPs in line, it would be a pretty rash move to actually reclassify broadband.<p>The US has painfully little competition in most areas, there is no debate about that. But new technology has been fixing that, albeit slowly, via increasingly expansive and competitive 4G, Satellite, and even improvements in moving data across copper wires or existing phone lines (not going to get you 100mb service, but quite plausibly "good enough" that you can realistically threaten Comcast with quitting service.)<p>I don't want to get in a libertarian vs flame war, but the fact is, it is far easier to regulate than deregulate when it becomes unnecessary. If the non-competitive market we have now is an artifact of old technology and installation costs, it would be a mistake to set up a regulatory infastructure we won't be able to roll back.
Wheeler is apparently basing the 'light touch' Title II regulation on similar regulations applied to mobile video (but not mobile data). Does anyone have some examples of the applications of mobile video being so regulated (The YouTube app on my phone? Probably not?) the kinds of regulations imposed and what the results have been?
I think the radio analogy is spot on, and I really believe that the endgame to all this government interest may very well be the same sort of regulatory control that the FCC now imposes in radio stations and content via the [1] Communications Act of 1934.<p>This can easily been seen as a power grab by plutocrats who want to start filtering and controlling the money making and informational aspect of the web, and while I am, of course, speculating about this outcome, I think in general, it has been on the back burner for years.<p>You know, to protect the children and all that FUD.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934</a>
Contrarians... gotta love em. They keep the running Looney Tunes reverse-psychology joke going. Counter-cultures are no different than the trend-following cultures they try to polarize themselves from. I guess I shouldn't have been shocked into commenting on this one for the oddly negative responses from some, but I do believe that the formulation of that negativity demands some more research. Has the internet created a society full of contrarian trolls bent on using sheer will to overcomplicate simple subjects?
I am concerned about the implications for free speech. And I don't mean the freedom to say whatever I want as long as the FCC approves or that I don't piss off a large enough political constituency. If I start a blog to post pictures of Alah am I going to be shut down? What about forums that discuss illegal drug use? How long till the FBI, DEA, etc. petition the FCC to shut these sites down? What about sites like reddit that carry porn, post pictures of Alah AND discuss illegal drug use? I don't care about these sites but I do care about their right to run these forums and the participants right to discuss any issue openly, even socially unacceptable ideas.<p>Free speech is a political principle but people pay lip service to it because they don't understand it and how important it is to a free society. If FCC starts to regulate speech on the internet (i.e. actual censorship which only the government can practice) by defining acceptable content and shutting down websites for so-called "hate speech", requiring a government "blog" license, etc. then it is game over for our freedoms and the future of the country.
The HN title is wrong and misleading. The NYT headline is "In Net Neutrality Push, F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating Internet Service as a Utility".<p>That's a little different than "FCC regulating the Internet." ISPs provide internet endpoints to consumers. They should be utilities.
"Today, 55 percent of online traffic happens on smartphones and tablets, according to the F.C.C.." I did not know this, it's surprising for me. Mobile-first approaches makes a lot more sense now.
What could possibly go wrong?<p>Fears about big companies are legitimate. I just fear what the FCC might do a lot more.<p>It all seems fine now, but the benevolent regulators in charge now might be replaced by less-benevolent ones later.
The net becomes a utility (and ISPs utility providers), and every breach, exploit, or unprotected private data leak becomes a terrorist action at prosecutorial discretion.<p>Something to think about.
How is complete government regulation equivalent to a "free and open Internet"?<p>Everyone seems to think that this will just be exactly what we have now, but with more freedom and options. I don't think this will be the case.<p>It will open the door for any future governments to start regulating things like freedom of speech.
Yeah the government's goal is totally a "free and open Internet."<p>Except that part of the government dedicated to vacuuming up and storing and analyzing every signal from every network-enabled device on the planet.
That will be a sad day. Internet technology still has a lot of room to improve before the government steps in and kills all market forces that encourage those improvements.<p>If you don't like your current service levels now, just wait until the government gets involved.
Wait, doesn't calling the Internet a utility mean all data will be metered by the MB from now on? Or does that not apply here? If it does, wouldn't that give carriers <i>exactly</i> what they wanted - the ability to charge video providers much more than they would say a news website?<p>The idea behind the whole net neutrality movement was to have "all you can eat plans" where all data is treated the same. What if now we get the "all data is treated the same" part, but not the "all you can eat" one?<p>Another issue: government spying. I know the ISP's/carriers have given the government virtually everything they've asked for, including direct access to the cables for the plain-text data + the recent cookie tracking inserted into people's traffic, but some of them have refused to do much of it, like Sonic, and I think Google takes a similar approach, fighting for users' rights, even if Verizon and AT&T do not. So what does it mean now that the government classifies all Internet under Title 2. What can we expect in terms of surveillance? And does it make it much easier to force <i>all</i> ISP's to comply with certain surveillance requests?