Appeal Judge Strikes Down Net Nuetrality

[zitothebrave]

http://bgr.com/2014/01/14/net-neutrality-court-ruling/

Holy **** is that dude out of touch.

"In its ruling against the FCC’s rules, the court said that such restrictions are not needed in part because consumers have a choice in which ISP they use."

Where the hell does that dude live? I have 2 wireline options where I live Cable or dialup. Heck I don't even know if Dialup is an option even. Cable companies own a monopoly on their market that's sometimes fought with other cable companies but that's rare, and sometimes fought with Verizon for DSL or Fios. Choice between 2 is hardly a choice. Only a few markets have real choice where say they have Verizon,Cable,a nd Google to choose from, and those places generally have better choices.

To compare the bull**** that is cable. I lived before in a place where the only internet option was cable. Cablevision knew that and never offered me a deal on anything. I wound up cancelling the TV and Phone part of my triple play, and going with just internet, paid 55 bucks a month for it. A coworker who lives in an area where there's Fios paid 20 bucks a month for the same service and same company. Because they have to introduce different prices where there is competition.

It's really a sad state the communication networks in the US. ALl about money and control. They want monopolies so bad.

[Krgrecw]

AT&T was going to challenge 'net neutraility' in the upcoming months. Net neutrality was going to fail anyways

[zitothebrave]

It was going to because corporatios have so greatly corrupted our legal and legislative sides of our country.

[goldfly]

yay

big corporations win again

America for the loss yet again

[jpx7]

Usual story—I knew about Powell's initial, disastrous, and entirely addled 2002 "decision," but—though I'm not surprised in the least—I wasn't aware he was now chief lobbyist for the industry he helped dodge any regulation:

Who deserves the blame for this wretched combination of monopolization and profiteering by ever-larger cable and phone companies? The FCC, that's who. The agency's dereliction dates back to 2002, when under Chairman Michael Powell it reclassified cable modem services as "information services" rather than "telecommunications services," eliminating its own authority to regulate them broadly. Powell, by the way, is now the chief lobbyist in Washington for the cable TV industry, so the payoff wasn't long in coming.

[...]

In an important speech in December and a long essay released at the same time, he's seemed to play on both sides. But that won't work. The only way to defend net neutrality, which prioritizes the interests of the customer and user over the provider, is to do so uncompromisingly. Net neutrality can't be made subject to the "marketplace," as Wheeler suggests, because the cable and telephone firms control that marketplace and their interests will prevail. Congress? Don't make me laugh--it's owned by the industry even more than the FCC.

The only course is for public pressure to overcome industry pressure. That's a tough road, but there's no alternative. Do you want your Internet to look like your cable TV service, where you have no control over what comes into your house or what you pay for it? Then stay silent. If not, start writing letters and emails to your elected representatives and the FCC now. It's the only hope to save the free, open Internet.

Regretfully, I don't share the author's marginal optimism vis-à-vis the potential efficacy of letter-writing campaigns.

[jpx7]

Another piece, from The New Yorker, pushing a bit of optimism that net-neutrality's death-knell may have been sounded a bit too early:

What could possibly have convinced the agency to pursue a legal strategy that any law student could see was dubious? As in any big mistake, there were compounding errors. Members of Congress threatened to strip the F.C.C. of some of its powers if it enacted the rules with the full weight of its legal authority. (Indeed, Congress tried and failed to overturn the Open Internet Order.) A.T. & T. warned that it would cancel its ongoing effort to become a cable company, threatening to tar the agency with job losses. One senior F.C.C. staffer told me that it would have unduly affected the stock prices of the telecom firms. The agency also had a Kool-Aid-drinking problem; it started to believe its own legal arguments, however weak. Altogether, it was a cowardly reaction to empty political threats.

Tom Wheeler, the new chairman of the F.C.C., now has the unfortunate task of dealing with strategic errors made by his predecessor. Restoring the agency’s long-standing authority over broadband telecommunications is much simpler than it appears. Wheeler needs only to reaffirm that, for Internet firms that want to send information to customers, broadband is a “telecommunications service,” meaning that the F.C.C. has the authority to regulate it. He has both the time and the votes to do so.

Though I'm still skeptical, it's a good reminder that there do exist avenues around and over the decision of the Appeals Court (and the potentially catastrophic fallout thereof).