FCC Proposes New, Awesome, Net Neutrality Rules
The FCC today proposed new rules to protect and preserve "net neutrality," the idea that ISPs must treat all users the same and not prejudice against different types of customers. In a speech, Chairman Julius Genachowski supported adopting the "Four Freedoms" first articulated by the FCC in 2004 (PDF) not just as principles but as formal rules, and adding two more: "non-discrimination" and "transparency." The big networks are, naturally, incensed.
More specifically, the new principles are:
5) Non-discrimination — broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications.
6) Transparency — providers of broadband Internet access must be transparent about their network management practices.
And to recap, The "Four Freedoms" are:
1) Freedom to Access Content: Consumers should have access to their choice of legal content
2) Freedom to Use Applications: Consumers should be able to run applications of their choice
3) Freedom to Attach Personal Devices: Consumers should be permitted to attach any devices they choose to the connection in their homes
4) Freedom to Obtain Service Plan Information: Consumers should receive meaningful information regarding their service plans."
With the fifth principle, it's like they're staring directly at Comcast.
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Comments:
Maybe this is the first step to me being able to properly stream from Hulu without being in a constant state of buffering - no thanks to Cox's ridiculous limits. I'm getting nowhere near the speeds that I am paying for, which is such a sham. I'm considering downgrading my internet so I won't have to pay so much, but I'm afraid it'll slow to dial up speed.
What does it take to go from proposed rules to actual regulations?
Excellent rules. But where are the teeth? There need to be extremely serious penalties for violating the rules, or else they're nothing but a wishlist.
This still doesn't go far enough.
"We don't throttle. $1 / MB charge for all data" fits these rules to a T.
It won't matter. Since I pay so many "fees and taxes" on my comcast bill already. Once they break 1-6 of the rules repeatedly, there will be a "Reimburse Comcast for punitive fees fee: $11.73" on my bill.
Heh you know that the ISP's are going to come uncorked over the non-discrimination policy.
its like walmart paying the city to close off the road to kmart. how can anyone think this is a good idea.
Someone has to say it-
This is change we can believe in!
Elections DO have consequences-- this is excellent!
It seems freedoms 5 and 6 are necessarily part of freedoms 1-4, so they are redundant.
That guy looks like Matthew Broderick. I think he may have just won my vote on anything he proposes.
I have problems with the first one as it seems like it would open a can of worms.
@Al Swearengen: The government is always redundantly redundant always. That is how they waste money.
The intent is to allow private ventures to succeed, instead of TW putting a corporate tax on them.
Basically, if a cable company wanted to, they could make Steam completely worthless to use for buying games. Just cut the download speed heavily, or put a charge on the bandwith you use using their service.
that's the thing these rules are designed to prevent.
These rules are also needed, since in many parts of the country, there is no broadband competition. Without competition, there is no free market, and government has to intervene to reduce externalities and monopoly rents.
@Al Swearengen: Not sure 6 is actually redundant. 5 can probably be covered by 1&2 but sometimes it's best to be explicit.
@Al Swearengen: #5 is there to make sure that the ISP doesn't say "Sure you have the freedom to read any site you want, but fox news paid us to be our official news site, so you'll have to pay $100/kb for cnn.com"
awesome
@Al Swearengen: As written, I'm not sure they are redundant. 2 just says you can run the application of your choice, it doesn't say the ISP can't decide that application is of minimal value and put it on a crappy priority with respect to download/upload speed.
Basically, I don't like how 1-4 is worded (mostly applies to 1 and 2 though). It doesn't exclude prioritization by an ISP, it just says you can't block stuff.
You know, this is such a good thing that I'm going to go through the heavy lifting of imprinting "Genachowski" to my memory.
Although, I must ask: the GOP had 8 years to develop something like this (or, 12 years if you count control over Congress). Why didn't they do anything about this when they had the chance? Why did it take Dems to make this happen?
@arstal:
Read my comment. Steam can very easily become worthless even with these rules. This doesn't say "no caps" or "no per byte charge"
@sqlrob:
The idea is that those instituting per-byte charges should have some competition to keep those from being too ridiculous.
The most important thing is, Comcast, say, can't sign a deal with Yahoo where they get $$ for allowing Yahoo to load faster than Google- and that was definitely coming down the pike.
Right now, if I get on the phone with a friend in the UK, we can navigate the web and see the same stuff. Without net neutrality the internet for a Comcast subscriber would look different than the internet for a Time Warner subscriber- and that is just wrong.
@Trai_Dep:
The GOP is AGAINST net neutrality in general. A few of the libertarians/Ron Paul types are for it- but as a rule, the GOP is against it.
@Trai_Dep:
Because Repubs believed in completely free enterprise, no matter if it hurts competition or consumers. And that didn't work out too well, so now we will have over regulation (of stock market, banking, telecoms, etc.) At least for awhile.
@Trai_Dep: Because their tech guys (the tubes guy in particular) were appointed to their positions based on pure politics not technical background. They proved they had little to no understanding of the internet or the tech behind it, again the tubes. Most of the their plans were based solely on protecting their own political interests rather than doing what's best for the people or consumers in general.
It'd be nice if it didn't get completely emasculated.
Fortunately it's in the public eye, so that makes it a little harder to completely destroy it in the system.
What kind of odds do you give for this surviving in any kind of recognizable form when it passes into practice? Better than healthcare, obviously.
@pecan 3.14159265: Hey, pecan! I'm dealing with TWC, and go with their "Lite" service, but I can stream Hulu like a dream!
Don't be afraid, young Jedi. Come. Come to the cheap side!
@JGKojak:
Competition? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.
I have choice of one provider (two if you want to count a reseller of the same service).
I live in a major tech city too, not the middle of nowhere.
@PencilSharp: What are your speeds like? I was told I would be getting around 10 mbps, but I'm clocking much, much less. The lowest tier (I'm on the second tier) promises 1.5 mpbs, which is why I'm afraid of going to an even lower tier.
@exploded: Here is the basic process:
1) Proposed Rule Published & opened for comments from the public (90 day comment period is typical, but it can be longer, and it can be extended at the request of the public).
2) Regulatory body reviewes all of the comments, and based on the feedback may opt to revise the proposed rule. The regulatory body should however respond to all questions/issues brought up during the comment period.
3) Regulator body will publish either a revised proposed rule (repeat steps 1 & 2 above), or they will publish the final rule (if the comments received in step 1 were relatively minor and did not warrant a major rewrite of the rule). Typically a 30 day comment period is allowed for final rules.
4) The leadership of the regulatory body will vote on the final rule. Depending on the nature of the rule, congressional input may not be required if the rule is within the agency's current regulatory authority, however the net neutrality rule will probably need to run through congress.
Bottom line is that rulemaking, especially one like this that is controversial can often take 5-7 years or more to complete, so don't expect things to change next week.
@pecan 3.14159265: I live in the middle of farmland, and my wireless gives me 600k/s. I may have to hit pause for a min to let hulu buffer, but I can still watch it just fine, once its buffered.
Just wait until the telecom lobby gets ahold of this. It's coming straight from the FCC, so hopefully there will be less intrusion of the telcom version of Max Baucus.
I agree with other posts, these rules require competition to prevent the telecoms from capping, putting in a per MB charge, pulling out of certain areas, or other nafarious things. Unfortunately, a strange conflagration of regulation (easements, local grants of monpoly)/deregulation (no regulation of areas where there is only one provider) gives many people the choice of only one or two internet providers.
A huge problem is the cost of entry is very high. This is actually a good place for local government involvment. Have the government install the lines and have telecoms compete for your business. The local government can charge the telecom providers maintenance fees so that they remain revenue nuetral (or positive). If the providers think they can do better, they can install their own lines.
Another option is to have non-profit or government sponsored internet option (a "public option"). A few towns have done it quite successfully. Those who have failed, usually fail becuase the telecom lobby steps in to prevent it. Again, it must be revenue nuetral or positive.
@Trai_Dep: When the Republicans had control of the FCC, they preferred to enforce existing rules rather than make new ones. Remember, the smacking down of Comcast for screwing with BitTorrent traffic happened under a Republican FCC. That being said, I really like these new rules.
As I said in the weekend post about this, ISPs don't really care what kind of content you put on their networks. They only say they do because some kind of content, such as video, uses a lot of bandwidth.
So what they actually care about is bandwidth. And you know what they're going to do now? Bandwidth caps!
This isn't going to do anything about bandwidth caps or throttling. Those don't target specific applications. I'm not sure everyone's getting all excited about.
@sqlrob:
If the providers want to do that, they certainly can. Or, they could say "we don't throttle, no bandwidth cap; service is now $300/month."
@QuantumRiff: That's the problem I have, and I have no patience to let it buffer five times within one hour of TV, especially when the speeds I signed up for indicate that I wouldn't be sitting around waiting for something to stream. I miss FiOS.
#1 sounds to me like it sets the stage for ISPs to monitor usage more closely; if those bittorrent feeds are for warez, then the traffic shaping is permissible? And if that's the bulk of the traffic....
@GearheadGeek: True, but this make it easier for them to get away with it. "Waahhh we can't regulate content so we HAVE to impose caps. You know, profits and stuff."
Actually, this isn't so great at all.
FCC "policies" are not law, as a court in Florida ruled. Two journalists were fired from a Fox station there for refusing to include false information in a story. They sued under a whistleblower law, and initially won, because the FCC has a policy against TV stations broadcasting knowingly false information. But an appeals court ruled that FCC policies are just policies, not law, and rule in Fox's favor.
(New World Communications of Tampa, Inc. v. Akre. Look it up.)
@pecan 3.14159265: I had TWC with Turbo at one time, but dropped it when I wasn't seeing Turbo speeds unless I took the day off work and was web surfing in the morning. I didn't notice a single change in my speeds, and I saved $10/month to boot.
Network management practices? Like when they're expanding to XYZ state, or providing coverage to QRS area? Could someone elaborate?