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You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Victory for Net Neutrality

Victory for Net Neutrality

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This is kind of a big fucking deal:

A federal appeals court has voted to uphold a series of strict new rules for Internet providers, handing a major victory to regulators in the fight over net neutrality and ensuring that one of the most sweeping changes to hit the industry in recent years will likely remain on the books.

The 2-1 court ruling Tuesday forces Internet providers such as Verizon and Comcast to obey federal regulations that ban the blocking or slowing of Internet traffic to consumers. The regulations from the Federal Communications Commission also forbid carriers from selectively speeding up websites that agree to pay the providers a fee — a tactic critics have said could unfairly tilt the commercial playing field against startups and innovators who may not be able to afford it.

More broadly, the decision affirms Washington’s ability to regulate Internet providers like legacy telephone companies. Approved in a bitterly partisan vote last year, the move by the FCC to “reclassify” Internet providers significantly expanded the agency’s role in overseeing the industry. It opened up Internet providers to all-new obligations they were not subject to before, such as privacy requirements that all telecom companies currently follow in order to protect consumers’ personal data.

More at ars technica and CNet.

Reader Interactions

96Comments

  2. 2.

    craigie

    It will go to the Supremes. Luckily, a 4-4 tie will uphold this. So yes, it’s a big deal.

  3. 3.

    Joe Falco

    Argle bargle statist repression of the All-knowing Invisible Hand of the Free Market!

  4. 4.

    Schlemazel Khan

    OT but OMG I love my President!

    If you are not seeing his talk you are missing him eviscerate ISIS and the GOP.
    “What difference will it make if we use the phrase “radical Islam”?

  5. 5.

    TaMara (HFG)

    President NMFTG, just called the rethugs on radical islam bullshit. I could not love this man anymore. I’ve never seen such FUCK YOU telegraphed by a commander-in-chief before.

  7. 7.

    The Golux

    OT – Is anyone else having an issue with the Twitter widget interfering with the “Next post” button on the right side of the screen? I am unable to read Balloon-Juice as I normally do, one post at a time. Firefox/Win10.

  10. 10.

    Elie

    Can someone put up a thread about Obama’s speech which is a response to Donnie’s yesterday…. Pretty good and directly on point in my opinion…

  13. 13.

    Mike J

    “It matters what we do, not just what we say. It didn’t matter what we called bin Laden—it mattered that we got bin Laden.” —Hillary

  14. 14.

    Schlemazel Khan

    If you ever saw that Key and Peele bit about Obamas inner angry black man I think we just saw him unleash that guy.

  16. 16.

    Alain the site fixer

    I’m working on the site; there are some backend issues I’m working with the hosting company to resolve. Meanwhile I’ll work on that #$*^#$^# Twitter icon.

  17. 17.

    Mike J

    AMARILLO, TX (KFDA) – Police situation at the Amarillo Walmart Supercenter at 4215 Canyon Drive.

    Reports indicate a man is inside with a gun, possible hostage situation.

    NewsChannel10 has multiple crews on the scene and will report details as they become available.

    Police are shutting down I-27 & Georgia Northbound frontage road. Motorists should avoid the area.

  19. 19.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mike J: Oh, shit. Of course, the gun is totally innocent in this. Can’t discuss easily availability of death penii, it’s too soon!

  20. 20.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Note that with Scalia gone, if this goes to the Supreme Court they will almost certainly leave the ruling in place. The world is a different place now, and this is just one pebble on what will grow into a mountain.

  21. 21.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Elie:

    Reposted from downstairs since the conversation seems to have moved here:

    @raven:

    I watched it on white house.gov.

    Terrific speech, naturally. I’m glad he took on that stupid shibboleth “radical Islam” and, without once mentioning the name Donald Trump*, made it abundantly clear how truly dangerous that kind of rhetoric is.

    *(He did say “the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States,” so there wasn’t a lot of doubt.)

  25. 25.

    Brachiator

    @Schlemazel Khan:

    If you are not seeing his talk you are missing him eviscerate ISIS and the GOP.
    “What difference will it make if we use the phrase “radical Islam”?

    Got a meeting in a couple of minutes, but hope I can track this down as a video later.

    @raven:

    Fucking CNN is calling it a “tirade”!

    Angry Black President stuff?

    Dopes.

  26. 26.

    dogwood

    @Elie:
    If you want links to what the President says or does or actual video of such, BJ is not the place to come. They just don’t do that here with any regularity. Go to CSPAN or the White House site.

  27. 27.

    eric

    @SiubhanDuinne: Inevitable, Mr. Anderson. the angry black man meme that Obama sought to avoid for 7 years. He was right and the rest of us demanding a more forceful obama were wrong.

  29. 29.

    Nelle

    I haven’t cursed the tv like this for a long time. F-ing Jake Tapper just said that the reason that Obama went off was that Clinton wasn’t getting the job done in countering Trump so he (Obama) had to step in. Wow.

  30. 30.

    ? Martin

    The 2-1 court ruling Tuesday forces Internet providers such as Verizon and Comcast to obey federal regulations that ban the blocking or slowing of Internet traffic to consumers. The regulations from the Federal Communications Commission also forbid carriers from selectively speeding up websites that agree to pay the providers a fee — a tactic critics have said could unfairly tilt the commercial playing field against startups and innovators who may not be able to afford it.

    The flipside to this is that those payments served as a subsidy for lowering the cost of internet or improving its performance. Unlimited and cheap are incompatible notions for physical goods. So while the neutrality angle is good, there will be a financial consequence for this for consumers, most likely being that the unlimited angle goes away in favor of either metered rates more like a phone company or more stringent caps for all traffic.

    Netflix and other streaming video services are the real focal point here. They’re the ones paying for the bandwidth guarantees and they’re the ones that will be most affected by metering or caps, and I’m guessing that consumers will be pretty unhappy with the result here.

  32. 32.

    Gelfling545

    @raven: well it’s fine for them to call it that because, in this post policy, post reality, post everything age, words don’t have to mean what they mean, if you see what I mean.

  34. 34.

    Mike in NC

    POTUS speech will cause Drumpf to turn from orange to beet red. Might get to see him blow a gasket on live TV.

  35. 35.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @? Martin: Oh, bullshit. The payments were used not to upgrade the physical plant, but for hookers and blow.

    These maggots are not to be trusted. Ever.

  36. 36.

    SFAW

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    (He did say “the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States,” so there wasn’t a lot of doubt.)

    Why would he be talking about Hillary?

    I heard most of his speech — not sure I would call it a press conference — and when he launched into his “tirade” (Thanks CNN! Now go kill yourselves, pronto!), I kept hoping he would, at the appropriate time, say something like “So, to my Republican friends, who seem to think that a cute phrase matters, I say — in as friendly and respectful manner as they deserve, of course — GROW THE FUCK UP. If you motherfuckers walked the walk one-quarter as well as you talk the talk, ISIS/ISIL would become 2016’s version of ‘Where are they now?’ So either do your damn jobs, or get the fuck outta the way.”

    But the FSM doesn’t love me enough for that to have happened.

  37. 37.

    bemused

    @Nelle:

    Ridiculous. Obama is still the president. Is Trapper actually surprised that Obama gave a presser on the worst massacre in US since 911? No, being a jerk earns his paycheck.

  38. 38.

    Brachiator

    @? Martin:

    The flipside to this is that those payments served as a subsidy for lowering the cost of internet or improving its performance. Unlimited and cheap are incompatible notions for physical goods. So while the neutrality angle is good, there will be a financial consequence for this for consumers, most likely being that the unlimited angle goes away in favor of either metered rates more like a phone company or more stringent caps for all traffic.

    I don’t think that bandwith is a physical good in that it is not the same thing as a flow of water or even electricity.

    And bandwith demand is only going to increase. People want to do more with all their devices. Service providers will find a way to satisfy demand if they have any brains in their head.

  39. 39.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @raven:
    WARNING!!! ANGRY BLACK MAN!! Hide your women, protect your children from his angry tirade

    Assholes

  40. 40.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Nelle:
    Well OF COURSE! You can’t expect a girl to take on Drumpf, you need to send your angry black foot-soldier to do the dirty work.

    A clearer example of unexamined racism and sexism would be hard to find.

  41. 41.

    SenyorDave

    Wow, a tirade, guess Obama finally snapped. Or maybe the media couldn’t wait to trot out the angry black man theme. I’ve always thought the “Obama thinks he’s the smartest man in the room” nonsense we hear from the Republicans is complete BS. What Obama does realize is that the Republicans are usually the stupidest people in the room. They deserve anyones contempt.

  44. 44.

    Arclite

    @TaMara (HFG): He’s able to give a big fat Fuck You to the Rethugs because he has no fucks left to give.

    (I know, it took me a few seconds to wrap my mind around the logic of that too)

  45. 45.

    Poopyman

    @Schlemazel Khan:

    A clearer example of unexamined racism and sexism would be hard to find.

    Wait a minute or two. I’m sure something will pop up.

    (Sorry about the lack of OP content.)

  46. 46.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @eric:
    You win. I am overcome with the moment. I know he couldn’t do it because of the ABM meme but this is the guy I have been wanting. The big dog used to take the GOP apart in ways thy could not defend but this take down was the champion. I’m almost giddy and can only imagine the butthurt squid ink squirting out of Republicans this afternoon

  47. 47.

    ? Martin

    @Villago Delenda Est: Physical plant has been continuously upgraded throughout the US. Cost per Gb for consumer broadband has steadily dropped (not uniformly geographically it should be noted). I can get gigabit fiber to my house for $70/mo. Not cheap, but per GB its far cheaper than anything previously offered. Comcast’s margins for broadband are only around 5% once you factor in their investments in physical plant. If you want to consider a 5% margin to be ‘hooker and blow money’, then okay, but pretty much every for-profit company including your local health clinic is deep in hooker and blow territory.

  51. 51.

    Tracy Ratcliff

    @? Martin: Too lazy to google, but wasn’t it about 2 weeks ago that the CEO of Verizon said on the record that data caps weren’t about costs but really about rent-seeking?

  52. 52.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @SFAW:

    (He did say “the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States,” so there wasn’t a lot of doubt.)

    Why would he be talking about Hillary?

  53. 53.

    Arclite

    @? Martin:

    Netflix and other streaming video services are the real focal point here. They’re the ones paying for the bandwidth guarantees and they’re the ones that will be most affected by metering or caps, and I’m guessing that consumers will be pretty unhappy with the result here.

    The only reason caps are a possibility at all is due to ISP monopoly/duopoly status. The vast majority of users are below the cap the vast majority of the time, and studies have shown that heavy users account for a tiny fraction of bandwidth. If the ISPs try this, the FCC needs to force line sharing so that the ISP is forced to rent infrastructure to the competitors. Either that, or they need to force functional separation of the infrastructure and the ISP businesses, i.e. break apart the ISPs into component businesses so there can be actual competition. This monopoly bullshit has got to stop.

  59. 59.

    jake the antisoshul soshulist

    Don’t worry, rent seekers will seek rents.
    If it had gone the telecom’s way they would have raised rates. Since it did not, they will raise rates.
    The only difference would be that we will see the increases directly instead of second hand.

  60. 60.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @germy: Some white people are enraged about black men, period. And yes, the sky is blue, water is wet, and TV news is still useless.

  61. 61.

    Corner Stone

    It was a good speech. Not the barn burner I was expecting from comments and CNN headlines.
    I do fervently hope that his dismissal of the stupid and damaging “radical Islam” BS talking point causes MSNBC to never, ever let Hugh Hewitt back on their air. HH was beating on this BS talking point and PC culture all day yesterday after Trump’s speech.

  63. 63.

    Corner Stone

    @? Martin:

    The flipside to this is that those payments served as a subsidy for lowering the cost of internet or improving its performance. Unlimited and cheap are incompatible notions for physical goods. So while the neutrality angle is good,

    Martin, could you do me the favor of describing what you believe the concept behind net neutrality actually is?

  64. 64.

    Corner Stone

    For a secret Kenyan mooslim he sure does a bad job of pronouncing all the mooslim terrorists the US has killed. Such a good actor! He sneaky thatta way!

  66. 66.

    Corner Stone

    Although he did kind of give the whole game away as he turned the pages of his speech from left to right.

  67. 67.

    ? Martin

    @Brachiator:

    I don’t think that bandwith is a physical good in that it is not the same thing as a flow of water or even electricity.

    And bandwith demand is only going to increase. People want to do more with all their devices. Service providers will find a way to satisfy demand if they have any brains in their head.

    Physical goods have two components – capital costs and recurring costs. Water usually amortizes the capital costs (pipes, waste lines) over a really long period of time – decades, with a non-zero recurring cost (the cost of the water itself and maintenance). But there are exceptions as Flint, MI is discovering, where the capital costs need to be paid over a much shorter period of time.

    The reason why bandwidth is a physical good is because the infrastructure to deliver it currently has such a short lifespan. It was originally copper phone line, then when that maxed out most of us switched to coax, and now to fiber (or straight to wireless). Its why developing countries skip as much of the the physical infrastructure as possible and go straight to wireless. In africa and asia, high speed broadband means iPhone, not PC.

    The US makes this situation vastly worse because we decided (America, fuck yeah!) that competition for infrastructure was beneficial, so we build out redundant infrastructure like crazy. How many overlapping LTE networks do we need? There’s 4 at my house. 1 would be adequate and instead have the carriers compete on service (which is terrible) rather than on access. But no. And we’re repeating that mistake with physical broadband, demanding massive redundant investment over short periods of time that requires such short amortization periods that physical cable in the ground is priced as a consumable.

    A rational country would have created a two-tiered market – one where companies bid to have a local monopoly on the infrastructure (infrastructure *should* be a monopoly – either by government or by strict regulation) and a tightly regulated market for leasing that infrastructure but are forbidden from providing the content, and one where the content providers lease the infrastructure. You would then have incentives in the former market to reach the largest number of users because they couldn’t use content access as a stick to differentiate the market, and incentives in the latter market to price content relative to demand, which would allow for much cheaper access for consumers that are willing to forgo high-content uses like Netflix.

    As it stands now, we’re overpaying for redundant infrastructure and high-content users are being subsidized by low-content users, the same as we run our financial and transportation systems. It’s a highly regressive way of doing this.

  68. 68.

    SFAW

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Yeah, I saw what you wrote the first time.

    After much consideration and thinking deep thoughts deeply, I have come to the conclusion that Ralph Nader was rite, that there was no difference between George W. Bush and Al Gore. In a similar vein: I can discern no difference between Hitlary Clinton and Donald FF. Trump, and will thus vote accordingly on November 9th.

    Note: Before you start trashing me, I want you to appreciate my sacrifice: do you have any idea how many brain cells I had to kill, to be able to write that last paragraph with a straight face?

  70. 70.

    Corner Stone

    @? Martin:

    The flipside to this is that those payments served as a subsidy for lowering the cost of internet or improving its performance.

    Am I alone in being the only one whose cable bill went up 3 times in less than 12 months? I can guarantee my pr0n didn’t load faster and the cable service was not any more stable than in the recent past. I’ve been researching the multiple competitor’s that provide broadband in my area and have narrowed it down to three choices of top tier ISPs.
    *spoiler alert!*
    .
    .
    .
    .
    HAHAHA! Just Kidding! My choice is between Comcast and Xfinity.

  71. 71.

    Arclite

    @Alain the site fixer:

    I’m working on the site; there are some backend issues I’m working with the hosting company to resolve. Meanwhile I’ll work on that #$*^#$^# Twitter icon.

    Are you working on the memory leak issue? I’ve had Chrome open on only two BJ tabs and nothing else, and I can see in Task Manager that the memory is growing at 2K per second. I’m already up over 1 GB mem for Chrome, and now performance on the site is starting to slow down. If I kill it and restart, it goes back to normal, but I keep having to do this every 10 min or so.

  72. 72.

    SFAW

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    I doubt that they’ll appeal to the Supreme Court.

    They have already announced that they will.

    Let’s hope that security is increased for the non-crazy/asshole SCOTUS members. Not that I would ever consider suggesting that Comcast et al. would ever do anything to harm anyone that could potentially deprive them of billions in revenue.

  73. 73.

    Major Major Major Major

    @? Martin: This. A story as old as capitalism itself. A private infrastructure situation doesn’t lead to efficiency gains through competition, it leads to rent-seeking and, as you said, subsidization of high-cost users by low-cost users.

    We should have a low-cost setup for the bulk of the people who don’t use insane amounts of internets like I do, instead of subsidizing people like me who could afford some extra data rates. Just like phone service or water service.

    Maybe next time we can take a forward-looking view and place the public interests in front of short-term private gain, ha ha. In the meantime we’re stuck with this situation. I happen to benefit from it, but it’s still stupid.

  75. 75.

    James E Powell

    It’s being played as Obama slams Trump, but it should be understood by the press/media as a slam directed at them for promoting these clowns and their hysterical responses to everything.

  76. 76.

    Bitter Scribe

    I don’t know why this was even ever an issue. If you take data from anyone who wants to send it, transmit it over the public airwaves or across cables laid on public easements, and sell it to anyone who wants to pay to receive it, you are a common carrier. It was nothing but naked greed for anyone to try to pretend otherwise.

  78. 78.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Bitter Scribe: Also this. It’s actually kind of surprising that we managed to, well not exactly get out in front of this one, but stop it before it turned into a Snow Crash-esque nightmare scenario. (Which is what I think of when I think of privatized infrastructure. The internet access in that book was actually pretty good? I don’t think they really went into any detail. But the roads, the roads!)

  80. 80.

    slag

    With the public rallying support for stricter regulations, President Obama threw his weight behind the plan to reclassify broadband. The issue has been politicized along strict party lines, with the two Republican FCC commissioners opposing the rules and the three Democratic commissioners supporting them.

    Once again, elections matter.

  81. 81.

    Jeff Spender

    @Amir Khalid: Saw that. Read a bit. Scratched my head in bewilderment.

    Their “revolution” never got off the ground and they’re angry.

  82. 82.

    gratuitous

    It’s kind of weird. As I recall, this whole “net neutrality” magilla started because Congress (while under Democratic control) passed some regulations about the internet and provision of service. That, of course, could not be allowed to stand, and so a suit was filed that went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled that Congress had overstepped its authority by promulgating the legislation; it was the sole purview of the FCC to do that.

    So the FCC enacted regulations, and wouldn’t you know it, they tracked with the rules Congress had enacted. Back to court we go! This time, the plaintiffs wanted a ruling that the FCC wasn’t authorized to regulate the internets. The DC Court of Appeals has now said, “Afraid so,” and we’ll go back to the Supremes for another ruling that, yes, it’s supposed to be the FCC that makes these rules.

    Oddly enough, I don’t hear Republicans yammering about the frivolity of this lawsuit.

  83. 83.

    James E Powell

    @Arclite:

    and I can see in Task Manager that the memory is growing at 2K per second. I’m already up over 1 GB mem for Chrome, and now performance on the site is starting to slow down.

    I’m one of those older people who has no idea what you are talking about, but it sounds really good.

  84. 84.

    schrodinger's cat

    I saw the President’s speech, I am fired up and ready to go. Trump has been consistent about one thing since the beginning of his campaign. Attack on immigrants. The Mexican rapists and banning Muslims and other heated rhetoric are the window dressing to his ultimate game plan, getting rid of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.

    Go to any right wing nativist hate site if you don’t believe me.

  85. 85.

    ? Martin

    @Corner Stone: I fully understand the concept behind net neutrality. What I’m saying is that the lack of net neutrality had the limited benefit of making certain things cheaper. I don’t support that tradeoff, but that doesn’t mean we should deny the tradeoff exists. The consequence of this is likely to be that Netflix and other video services don’t work as well. They won’t raise prices because they can’t use that added revenue to buy better bandwidth (the point of net neutrality). So you will likely see ISPs offer upgraded packages to deliver better video capacity – they will need to overserve bandwidth due to their inability to shape that traffic (usually by slowing bit torrent), and the rates for Netflix tiers will likely be more expensive than you are paying now.

    So the upside is that you’ll get faster access to things that, frankly, you probably didn’t care about being faster, and your streaming video will get worse which you probably do care about. And the solution to that problem will be to pay more money because net neutrality eliminates other solutions (for good reason, IMO). That’s the cost of net neutrality. And part of the problem here is that it’s impossible to disaggregate the content of the traffic (political speech, etc.) from the type of traffic (video, audio, etc.) so Netflix gets swept up in something that they weren’t necessarily being targeted over.

    Every university that I know of does this kind of bandwidth shaping for precisely the same reasons. Some traffic is prioritized over others because some traffic is mission critical, or requires a guaranteed amount of bandwidth (such as audio and video), while other traffic can function just fine under more irregular circumstances. The solution to that is to overserve bandwidth – provide way more infrastructure than you need to ensure that you have enough surplus capacity that the guaranteed bandwidth components have enough headroom to still function around the irregular traffic.

    There’s going to be a big ol ‘Thanks Obama’ at the end of this because net neutrality supporters refused to be clear about the economic consequences of the issue. I think those cost are worth paying, but they shouldn’t be dropped on the public without warning, either.

  86. 86.

    Shell

    Their “revolution” never got off the ground and they’re angry.

    And cause one time a little bird landed on his podium for 15 seconds, he’s obviously the anointed one.

  90. 90.

    ? Martin

    @Corner Stone:

    Am I alone in being the only one whose cable bill went up 3 times in less than 12 months? I can guarantee my pr0n didn’t load faster and the cable service was not any more stable than in the recent past. I’ve been researching the multiple competitor’s that provide broadband in my area and have narrowed it down to three choices of top tier ISPs.
    *spoiler alert!*
    .
    .
    .
    .
    HAHAHA! Just Kidding! My choice is between Comcast and Xfinity.

    Thank you for proving all of my points. I owe you one.

  94. 94.

    Corner Stone

    @? Martin: I disagree with your theory and analysis. What happens after subsidized monopolies acquire the power to control content and ultimately the delivery of any content they like, or do not like, if there is no net neutrality.
    Sure, there was a way to do this a long time ago that would have led to much lower infrastructure costs and re-tooling in ever more rapid technological turn arounds. But we did not do that. We let a private monopoly carve up the country and then they wanted to further hold us hostage and crush any innovators or creative content they were paid by other, more established or better funded organizations. This does not solve our monopoly pricing/service model but it does allow us to pry their damned hand off our neck for a while.
    My point about the cost going up for basically no reason (no faster internet, no better service delivery) is in direct refutation to the claim that w/o net neutrality the infrastructure costs would not be subsidized.
    In other words, they are going to gouge me because they can, NN or no NN. Do you really think any form of private enterprise payments would ever trickle down to the end consumer?
    Now at least they can’t threaten a potential future where we can choose content and not have to buy their bundles with 200 channels of crap I don’t ever watch just to get the handful of content I am interested in.

  95. 95.

    randy khan

    @SFAW:

    What I’ve seen on Supreme Court appeals (and bear in mind there still could be a request for the whole D.C. Circuit to hear the case) suggests that parties are hedging on that. Even AT&T said that it expected to participate in the case at the Supreme Court, not that it would appeal.

    Having followed these issues for a looong time (since broadband first was offered at whopping 3 Mbps speeds if you wanted to pay the premium), I think it’s not a great case to appeal to the Supreme Court. In 2005, the FCC won an appeal on the question of classification of broadband service 6-3, but if you looked at opinions it was 6 justices saying the FCC had the discretion it used here and 3 saying the FCC had no choice but to classify broadband as a common carrier service, which was the central part of the 2015 decision that was reviewed today. It probably is hard to find 5 votes at the Court to overturn the FCC’s decision, given that.

  96. 96.

    Applejinx

    @Jeff Spender: WTF. Did you WANT to lose?

    A fair question I’d think! Is the bar to clear (for mattering), ‘defeat Hillary, run a purity pony campaign vowing to raise everyone’s taxes, and lose to Trump plus whoever defects from the Democrats or stays home’?

    If so, that’s mighty pyrrhic and I’m not sure any of us can afford it. How about ‘the revolution totally mattered AND Hillary ends up having to run as its figurehead to the dismay of some of the revolutionaries’?

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