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Yes!


The FCC voted in favor of net neutrality

"Cable TeeVee" companies just can't get over their well-entrenched mindset that "everything which comes to a home over a coaxial cable must be TeeVee."

I have to disagree with that assessment. IMHO, it is all about creating billable events. You want your streaming to reach your customers, pay us for better bandwidth. Hey cable customers, you want to use us to get your streaming, pay us for better bandwidth.

They did this with getting the right to show local channels, but encrypt them so the customers would have to rent a box, per tv.

Bullseye

Exactly. Which is why internet service should be strictly a "common carrier." You must carry all traffic with all possible despatch, without fear or favor.

Breaking: House Judiciary Committee Tells FCC It's Going To Block Net Neutrality Rules
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneu...ommenced.shtml

I knew it was too good to be true. The ISPs will never let it pass.

I frankly see this "development" as "politics as usual" ... b-u-t ... I also happen to think that this entire issue is something that, in the end, will require some "new law." In other words, Congress ... not [just] the FCC.

So far, we have lots of "tried-and-true law" with regards to ... telephones. But a fundamental characteristic of these technologies is that they are "point-to-point." You, calling "from phone #X," place a call "to phone #Y." And, for the entire duration of the call (from a legal sense, if not today strictly from a technical one ...), the communication channel betwixt X and Y is both "dedicated" and "private." (Such that the exception to "private" is called "wiretapping.")

The Internet, however, is entirely different. It was (literally) designed to withstand an atomic holocaust. There is no "dedicated path." (In fact, there is no particular "path.") The route, whatever it turns out to be, is not "private," nor are the packets of the transmission private at any point during their [unpredictable... packet-by-packet...] route.

The "cable companies" and "teevee companies" (and for that matter, "mobile-phone companies") are all trying to monopolize the so-called "last mile," which is the point at which the data traffic passes through the last remaining vestige of their "Ma Bell's Black Rotary-Dial Phone™" former-monopoly: that piece of wire that stretches from the pole to your house. And in this attempt I frankly think that they are only slightly less clueless than the loud-mouthed my-party-driven politicians ... who right now are "speaking for the sake of having spoken" instead of pausing to consider the underlying legal questions.

Ultimately, "new law" is going to have to be created here ... and, the content of that "new law" (which is going to have to last for a very long time) will not be easy to decide.

"Creating bad-laws is easy. Creating good-laws is very, very hard."

Isn't this going to be much much harder to define than usual?
Or: isn't this one of those rare things that HAS to be completely white or completely black (not-gray-zone-compatible)?

I mean, especially in the "black" case:
as soon as a provider guarantees service X with e.g. 100% reliability, that provider will have A LOT of interest to deteriorate the remaining services to indirectly motivate the issuers and/or the receivers of service Y to pay to reach a certain degree of reliability for service Y.
The budgets for the services Y/W/... will just be reduced leaving only service X with full capability.
Meaning: following the principle of capitalism, if I own a company, why would I be motivated to improve the reliability of service Y if I have already a good income through service X?

Blackburn Bill Attempts To Gut New Net Neutrality Rules. You Know, For Freedom.
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneu...-freedom.shtml

Actually, Meta, this sort of thing is just "irrelevant political noise."

First of all, "$80,000 in political contributions" is "a chicken-feed bribe contribution." You'll have to add at least three more zeros, and quite-possibly four, to your "usual and regular take," before you can call yourself a "Big [Wo]Man On Campus™" in the US Congress ...and you'll probably have to get yourself elected into the US Senate. (Good luck with that.)

There will probably be several dozen bills, more or less just like this one, "introduced" in the next several weeks or months. All of them will die in committee.

At the end of the day, "the Internet is not about 'the Last Mile.'" Why? I can think of two very simple reasons right off the bat:

1. Internet content is not "an episode" of any sort. It isn't a television or radio 'program.' (Nor, a 'commercial.') In other words: "the Internet is not 'Broadcasting.'" The Internet is a point-to-point communication network, which therefore has no technical, functional, nor legal counterpart from either the "broadcasting" or the "telecom" worlds ... even though both of those worlds have managed to make use of it.
2. The entire legal/liability issue of actually "trying to 'play favorites'" will expose you to lawsuits easily big-enough to sink you. Please bear in mind that most bankruptcy filings are due to lawsuits, not debt level.

Fifteen seconds after "any company, no matter how big-and-bad they suppose themselves to be," actually tries to set themselves up as the arbiter of "which traffic goes first / which traffic does not," they will have to start serving complimentary coffee to the tens of thousands of Process Servers who will be showing up at their doorsteps, politely asking their Corporate Officers to "sign here, please."

And, long before the Honorable Court actually gets around to processing the first entry in their docket, the international investing community will have already spoken . . . Their share-prices will be in the single digits, and credit will be unobtainable. It can happen in less than 24 hours. . .

I'm not quite that optimistic about this. I think the big ISPs are out to crush net neutrality, and they have the power to do it. Heck, even with net neutrality passing, there is still the possibility that the big ISPs will have workarounds for it.
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneu...about-it.shtml

I wouldn't be optimistic either.
http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015/db0312/FCC-15-24A1.pdf

Not sure.
I'm thinking of "the Internet" as "the Sea" and the "last mile" as the "ports" => whoever controls the ports controls the sea, no?

Actually, I think that the best "legal corollary" for the present situation is that ... the harbor-masters wish to control which ships are able to 'timely off-load their cargo,' and which are, for no compelling "Act Of God™" reason, going to be arbitrarily(!) delayed.

Right now, the "'last-mile' people" are all (old-world) media people, who are content to equate "the Internet" with the one thing that they know: "television."

But: "they haven't a cucking floo."

Truth is, a real-world harbor-master has no idea what ship might show up next, nor how important the arrival of that ship might be to anyone else on the planet. "A real- world harbor-master" is, in fact, therefore very aware of the myriad legal theories under which he might be sued for the act of "playing favorites."

In the eyes of the law,™ as well as reality, the Internet is, and must be, a "Common Carrier." The fellow who happens to own "the last mile" actually has no choice(!!) but to be "studiously neutral." Trouble is, "cable-television people" haven't yet figured that out.