Posted on 01/14/2014 8:32:19 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down the Obama administration’s net-neutrality rules.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal Communications Commission overstepped its authority by prohibiting Internet providers from blocking or discriminating against traffic to lawful websites.
By classifying Internet access as an “information service” as opposed to a “telecommunications service” — which is the classification used for traditional telephone companies — the FCC cannot impose its “anti-discrimination” and “anti-blocking” rules on Internet providers, the court said.
“Given that the Commission has chosen to classify broadband providers in a manner that exempts them from treatment as common carriers, the Communications Act expressly prohibits the Commission from nonetheless regulating them as such.”
The decision is blow to President Obama, who made net neutrality a campaign pledge in 2008, and erases one of the central accomplishments of former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who pushed the "Open Internet" order.
On the winning side is Verizon, which filed the lawsuit, and other major telecom companies that argued the rules created a regulatory burden and stifled the marketplace.
But the net-neutrality rules were strongly supported by Internet companies like Google and Netflix, which fear that Internet providers will begin to charge them more for the heavy use of their sites by customers.
okay—i am very sleepy... perhaps that is the reason i cannot grasp what this ruling is about... i have reread the article and still cannot get a clear idea... perhaps i will reread later when i am more rested...
I am not sure if this is good news or bad news.
I tend to think it is bad for us.
I think it means that your internet will function more like a cable service provider, than a gas or electric company. Internet may cost more for services like netflix and hulu. Perhaps a political bundling political websites, or travelocity bundles. It depends on what they decide based on their own interests.
What this means is that service providers can choose to decide what gets to be on their internet service, and how much that costs essentially.
It might make the internet cheaper for those companies which offer a bear bones program. Without facebook, or netflix, or any streaming website.
Yes, this line confuses me: “...the Federal Communications Commission overstepped its authority by prohibiting Internet providers from blocking or discriminating against traffic to lawful websites.”
So, “net nutrality” meant that the government could STOP providers from blocking traffic? So now internet providers can block traffic if they want?
This does not really sound good on the surface. But the surface is all this article provides.
it’s all the double negatives and positively negative spin speak that you’re trying to unravel. I’m also unsure of the meaning on this
I use Satellite. It’s very fast and I can stream movies no problem. Except that if I stream a movie I’ve pretty much used up a months worth of service and get throttled back for the rest of the month.
Net-neutrality = providers cannot use a la carte pricing based on destination. At least that’s the argument with this case.
Based on the court ruling, providers can now cherrypick or throttle Internet connectivity based on endpoint.
Satellite’s biggest drawback is latency. If you’re an online gamer, satellite is worthless.
I tend to think it is bad for us.
Put another way, it’s no longer “all you can eat”.
‘classifying Internet access as an “information service” as opposed to a “telecommunications service” ‘
FCC will just reclassify it.
Kinda like to see both types offered. Not sure what the difference would be, just curious.
isn’t it based on charging clients on the amount of data downloaded?
It will also be the end of any shred of internet anonymity. Since every website has a price tag, there has to be a receipt in some form for every sale.
Satellite’s biggest drawback is latency. If you’re an online gamer, satellite is worthless.
At the turn of the century, I did a LOT of WWII flight online. But that was with Comcast.
yes! i kept rereading that line and switching out words with synonyms to try to figure out what it was actually saying :)
Per-use or bandwidth-monitored Internet providers, yes. The crux of the case was that Verizon was scheming with Google to charge a higher price to users who wanted higher-bandwidth access to sites like Hulu or Netflix. This meant that while you could still access those sites, if you paid Verizon a little extra a month, you’d get priority bandwidth to those sites to ensure smooth streaming.
It’s all based around QoS (Quality of Service) which is already in place on business accounts. They just wanted to go this route with residential customers but sell them the “premium” bandwidth to make more money. All other traffic would be classified as “bulk” and thus stuffed to the bottom of the layer 3 heap as demand goes up.
“Receipts” as you describe already exist in the form of Internet access logs. I run a proxy server from home and could tell you where every user of my home network went. If you’re using my pipe, I know every site you browsed, for how long, what sites delivered content at what time, etc. This is already in place for your ISP, I can guarantee it.
It's good if you prefer to leave decisions to individual businesses; bad, I suppose, if you prefer government to tell business what it may and may not sell and for how much.
This might help, maybe.
The EFF has been against it, basically favoring the free market over FCC’s regulatory hand. But, we all trust the government, correct?
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/Net-Neutrality-in-a-Nutshell-72425.html?wlc=1305574787
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