Court strikes down US net neutrality rules

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gl417l757o

by rmason • 2 years ago

156 140 2 years ago

dataflow• 2 years ago

Duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42578237

Brendan Carr, a Republican member of the FCC who Trump has tapped to lead the agency, said he was pleased the court had invalidated the Biden administration's "Internet power grab".

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

We're truly in the post-truth age.

vouaobrasil5• 2 years ago

Net neutrality is crucial for a free internet. This will be even more important for the future, because without it we will have tighter and tighter controls over the internet. A lack of neutrality will, among other things, allow secret deals between service providers and big platforms that will squeeze out the independent internet and accelerate a total commercialization of all aspects of the internet.

Large businesses are becoming a greater liability than ever before. Although I applaud net neutrality advocates, something greater must be done: the takedown of large corporations and rebuilding them from scratch.

bko6• 2 years ago

Is there any evidence that this is taking place since it's been over 7 years since it's repeal? And that it's harming competition?

I'm skeptical of introducing federal intervention preemptively as it seems like a natural extension would be censorship. If some regulatory agency is telling ISPs to allow legitimate content equally, it's not that much of a stretch to imagine they'll forbid "illegitimate" content. Think cheap fakes and other misinformation.

Analemma_• 2 years ago

This is a difficult demand to meet, because (as many people have said) the main causalities of net neutrality are the companies and platforms which never get started because potential founders rationally calculate that they can’t compete with existing zero-rated services when ISPs play favorites. Lack of NN has massive opportunity costs for innovation, but these are difficult to quantify.

Hendrikto3• 2 years ago

Yes we do have evidence. For example ISPs throttling specifically Netflix, and trying to extort money from them, when the customers already paid for the service. And continuing to do so, after Netflix offered to host middleboxes in their datacenters, to discredit their fake arguments. They are not doing that for service quality, but out of greed.

We should have had comprehensive broadband and fiber in every home for decades, but ISPs would rather throttle you, and charge you more for worse service, rather than make overdue investments in infrastructure.

Or ISPs not counting their own streaming services towards the data cap, but counting their competitors. Very anti competitive.

We need net neutrality.

piva002• 2 years ago

I'm skeptical of introducing federal intervention preemptively as it seems like a natural extension would be censorship.

Slippery slope fallacy.

The most natural side-effect from lack of net neutrality is throttling, ISPs can throttle high-bandwidth applications and ask them to pay up, if competitors pay up they have an advantage so it forces everyone to pay up for access to non-throttled customers. Smaller companies/startups will be in absolute disadvantage.

Now imagine throttling for almost any kind of application: game providers not paying for "premium access" get a 500ms delay, messaging apps not paying will have media delivery throttled (good luck sending a 20MiB video to your family when the ISP throttle it to 256kbps), it opens a new way for ISPs to monetise their networks, it opens a new way for bigger players to subjugate competition that doesn't have deep pockets.

ISPs experimenting with throttling has already happened, when data caps were a bigger thing they also sold "partnerships" with apps that wouldn't be counted towards the data cap.

phkahler2• 2 years ago

> the takedown of large corporations and rebuilding them from scratch.

They are actually destroying themselves. Enshitification is killing Microsoft, Google, Netflix, Facebook, and more. Just build solid alternatives focused on user satisfaction instead of profit so people have viable alternatives.

You can't build anything great from scratch in less than 10 years.

auc• 2 years ago

You say this, but their share prices are pretty much straight lines up the last 10 years (other than a short lived dip during Covid).

vouaobrasil5• 2 years ago

We don't really need to build from scratch in less than 10 years. We don't really NEED something as good as netflix, google, or Facebook. We need smaller, better alternatives.

Ask yourself this: imagine Facebook and Twitter going down for good. Would society be worse off? Probably not. We'd quickly find alternatives. Maybe they wouldn't be as fully featured but they'd work.

sofixa2• 2 years ago

Enshitification is killing Microsoft, Google, Netflix, Facebook, and more

Based on what metric?

FpUser• 2 years ago

"They are actually destroying themselves. Enshitification is killing Microsoft, Google, Netflix, Facebook, and more."

On what Earth? Enshittification is killing us. Big corps are doing just fine bending masses to their will.

"Just build solid alternatives focused on user satisfaction instead of profit so people have viable alternatives."

Easy peasy. I'll just change human nature, borrow couple of trillions from my buddy and it is all done.

"You can't build anything great from scratch in less than 10 years."

Suddenly I see a big optimist on HN

vel0city• 2 years ago

You won't be able to when connecting to Facebook and Netflix is free and unlimited but connecting to the solid alternatives costs extra and are throttled.

Hendrikto3• 2 years ago

takedown of large corporations

absolutely

and rebuilding them

absolutely not

AdrianB15• 2 years ago

Given enough time and slack, they will rebuild itself, no matter what. Corporations and cancer, they keep coming back.

vouaobrasil5• 2 years ago

Oh, I agree with you. I was hasty when I wrote that: I meant "building smaller alternatives"!

AdrianB15• 2 years ago

I fully agree with what you wrote. The question is: current laws are fit for purpose? There are many things that are wrong and supported by laws or things that can be improved but existing laws forbid that. Is this a question about net neutrality or a question about how can/should be implemented?

Same about corporate powers, especially in US where consumer protection seems to be a lot weaker than in EU, even if US has a lot more regulations.

vouaobrasil5• 2 years ago

Good points. I do feel like the current laws are still insufficient, and will ultimately fail due to the corporate control of the internet/governments. More drastic solutions are probably needed. Much better anti-trust laws perhaps to combat the excessive power of big tech, maybe.

afavour7• 2 years ago

Current laws are not fit for purpose but that gets to the heart of what worries me about the US: we can't pass laws any more.

I mean, that's an exaggeration, but major decisions like this being decided by the courts is fundamentally wrong. If the majority of the population disagree with this court ruling we ought to very simply head to congress and pass a new law to overturn it. But we won't and everyone knows it. Not to draw too many parallels but it feels similar to the recent overturn of Roe v Wade. It feels like we, as a population, are powerless to do something the majority wants.

pjmlp• 2 years ago

We are already beyond that, with countries closing down Internet access, and geopolitics going back to the cold war days.

FollowingTheDao3• 2 years ago

This is where boycotts come in.

Time to actually suffer to get what you want people.

afavour7• 2 years ago

I think this understates how essential internet access is these days. It would be very, very difficult for a lot of people to simply boycott their internet provider. Like, “not able to do your job” difficult. Few people are going to risk their job for net neutrality rules.

rsync2• 2 years ago

No, I think the correct response to biased network carriers is community Internet.

The unregulated capitalist free-for-all that strikes down net neutrality cannot also disallow independent network networks from being stood up.

CivBase2• 2 years ago

I'm pro net neutrality, but if it's ever going to work we need the legislature to do their job and put it into law. They either need to broaden the powers of the FCC or - better yet - enshrine net neutrality itself as law.

johnnyanmac5• 2 years ago

This is a part of the windfall from Chevron and all according to plan. Tear down the executive structures and have a congress in conflict. Leave the rest to "states rights" for their motte. When in reality we're giving the keys for private corporations to do whatever they want.

we'll likely see similar moves with the Department of Education this year.

assimpleaspossi• 2 years ago

we will have tighter and tighter controls over the internet.

Years ago, I said this might happen. Way back when, there was no FCC and the airwaves were the Wild West and anyone could throw up an antenna and call themselves a broadcaster.

The internet is too wild and you all know it. I, too, want to be able to put together my own web site to hold content or sell my wares but, as psychologists now warn, the harm this "anything goes" content has caused us needs to be tamed.

smsm42• 2 years ago

because without it we will have tighter and tighter controls over the internet.

Were you paying attention for the last 10 years? We already have tighter and tighter controls over the internet. Pretty much every government on the planet is itching to institute internet censorship, and many already did. Major content providers are tightly working with the governments to ensure no information disapproved by the government is allowed on their platforms. States are instituting digital ID schemes to control access to sites (and if you think it's only about porn you're still not paying attention). People are regularly deplatformed and banned from major internet services for expressing controversial opinions. Are you trying to scare me with something that had already happened?

something greater must be done: the takedown of large corporations and rebuilding them from scratch.

Ah yes, of course, only the glorious proletarian revolution will save us. How does it go? Le monde va changer de base: Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout!

Please wake me up when that happens. On the second thought, please don't, I'd rather not see it. We had enough of it in the last centrury, thankyouverymuch.

bko6• 2 years ago

I remember the intense response to the FCC repealing Obama era net neutrality rules on 2017.

The proponents of NN argued all these anti consumer and anti competitive practices that this will cause. It was framed as getting ahead of some of these abusive practices.

Now it's 7 years later. I haven't followed it closely but personally have not noticed many harmful or obvious exploiting of the removal of NN.

Am I just not seeing it? Do I have to wait longer? Were they waiting for this to become more permanent? What am I missing?

__alexs• 2 years ago

The impact was mitigated somewhat by states adding their own NN legislation. There has definitely been an increase in zero rating certain services like Spotify etc which creates new barriers to entry for smaller businesses though.

ANewFormation2• 2 years ago

Any link to carriers 0 rating Spotify? I believe you but am also in the same boat of looking for literally any downside to net neutrality being canned.

That said even this would hardly count as a negative for users though you're spot on about it hurting competition for other streaming services - on the other hand it's a way for ISPs to compete. Hmmm... still haven't formed an opinion on this issue yet.

vitorbaptistaa• 2 years ago

This is very common in Brazil. Most carriers give free WhatsApp and Facebook access. As many Brazilians are in the cheapest plans, this basically mean that that's all they can access on their phones.

jbombadil2• 2 years ago

I bet that they haven’t done it openly (maybe we haven’t discovered it yet?) because it’s a hot issue.

But there are examples where net neutrality has protected consumers.

In 2012, At&T blocked FaceTime on its network unless you were on one of its expensive plans.

An AT&T spokeswoman, speaking on background, disputed it was using cellular FaceTime as a "premium" feature, but acknowledged the company was using it as a lever to get users to switch over to the new plans which charge for data usage in tiers.

(Source: https://www.wired.com/2012/08/facetime-net-neutrality-flap/)

brightball• 2 years ago

I actually agree with AT&T on this one.

There is only so much cellular spectrum and the more it’s congested the more performance degrades for all other users. Rate limiting in that environment makes sense.

Rate limiting over fiber doesn’t though.

braiamp• 2 years ago

There hasn't been any fire lately, lets remove the fire extinguishers from the building.

Just because you don't see it happening overtly, doesn't mean that it's not needed. When dealing with private interests you have to presume that if something is allowed and will result in a marginal, even if insignificant rise in income, firms will do it. And considering that they've attempted to do it before, it's preferable to pursue regulation that would result in disincentives to pursue such actions, rather than let them to their own devices. You would remind a kid not to eat cookies before dinner, even if they know about it.

mexicocitinluez5• 2 years ago

Are you saying we shouldn't trust these huge corporations to look out for our best interests? /s

The idea that these companies won't leverage the absolute hell out of rulings like this to nickel and dime the shit out of you (which we know 1000% they already do) is absurd.

bko6• 2 years ago

if something is allowed and will result in a marginal, even if insignificant rise in income, firms will do it

In a closed system, maybe. But there are some options and the threat of new entrants that keep the system in check (e.g. SpaceLink). Regulation has a cost, and it might be able to prevent some bad behavior but it keeps competition out. That's why the most regulated industries are often the most stagnant, expensive and awful to deal with (think education, legal, health care, banking)

There's a million examples of companies not naively maximizing profits. Why doesn't McDonalds charge for napkins and ketchup? Surely some pointy haired manager suggested this to squeeze out some profit, but it would piss people off and isn't worth it. And this is a better constraint on bad behavior than some unelected regulatory body.

GrantMoyer• 2 years ago

Some time a couple years ago or so, during a period of apparent network congestion, I ran a few speed tests using various services. Results from the popular service Ookla were always above the nominal speed of my service. Results from any lesser known service and my own ad hoc test were all significantly lower.

It's not proof my ISP was prioritizing the well known speed test's traffic to gaslight subscribers about the low network speeds, but I find it suspicious. After all, why wouldn't they? It's not illegal.

glenstein• 2 years ago

The proponents of NN argued all these anti consumer and anti competitive practices that this will cause.

And the opponents for their part suggested:

- Broadband rollout to rural areas would never happen with Net Neutrality in place

- Repealing Net Neutrality would lead to a surge in new private investment

- No private company would ever throttle traffic

- Encrypted traffic would never be treated differently

- There's no risk that private companies will leverage differentiation of traffic types to support surveillance, censorship, or data mining or selling of data

- it would restore the conditions of the 1990s and early 00s that lead to major new companies like Facebook

- Broadband prices would fall

- Special zero-rated forms of broadband traffic would become available

It's now 7 years later. I've only followed on and off, but I haven't noticed a transformative explosion in private market investment, new Facebooks, lower prices, or anything like that, that was tied to an assessment of Net Neutrality.

So, same question back to you. I've been looking for the explosion in new private investment, the steep collapse in broadband prices and the new zero rated product offerings, unleashed by the repeal of net neutrality. Was I just not seeing it? Is that just around the corner now that it's been struck down? We'll be able to come back to a thread like this in another 7 years and that will all have happened, right?

boh2• 2 years ago

I always found it interesting that the big tech firms are so adamant about internet "freedom" when they've pretty much done everything they could to govern people's experience of that internet. I'm sorry if the "think about the small businesses" defense coming out the most valuable companies in existence seems a little thin. This isn't a David and Goliath fight as much as it is Godzilla vs Mothra--big companies fighting over who gets a bigger share of the profits. The net hasn't been neutral in a long time, irrespective of what the FCC has been doing. This isn't "we the people" vs big business. it's big business vs big business. "We the people" lost the fight a long time ago.

justwool2• 2 years ago

What even nonsense is this? Other than I think therefore I type.

Please can you actually explain how this is just big business vs big business? When this solidifies practices that allow major parties to unfairly dominate?

Do you even understand what net neutrality rules are/do?

ysavir• 2 years ago

I think their point is that the effects of removing net neutrality mirror the effects already seen on large platforms, which is how most people use the web. Twitter, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc already have very opinionated views on what content can be on their platforms, and which content gets shown to users vs which gets lost in the mist of cyberspace (or is shadow banned). So the competition we're seeing here, between providers and tech platforms, is a competition over who gets to have this form of control over the media.

boh2• 2 years ago

They make the companies you want to work for slightly less profitable. I guess that counts as immoral. I'm just sick of this grass roots lobbying that we're all supposed to take seriously as a fight for freedom.

disambiguation• 2 years ago

My reaction as well, the modern FAANG internet is far from free, and probably never will be again - arguments of content moderation aside. Regardless, the net neutrality movement was always about big tech protecting themselves from ISP bridge tolls, though I'm sure those costs will be passed on to consumers.

blfr• 2 years ago

Biden administration are the very same people who pressured social media companies into censorship[1]. Tens of seemingly serious people swearing that Hunter's laptop story is misinformation.

Who cares if your traffic gets a little more or less shaped when the platforms you're accessing are all neutered? Who cares how much Netflix has to pay for bandwidth when Amazon can just delete entire platforms, like they did with Parler?

"So-called open internet advocates" is the right phrase here because the Internet borne by these rules was anything but open. This policy is very much like the cookie warning in the EU, completely failed to deliver meaningful benefits.

[1] https://x.com/mtaibbi/status/1598829996264390656

sofixa2• 2 years ago

Biden administration are the very same people who pressured social media companies into censorship[1

Your link indicates that Twitter/affiliates donated money to Democrats (which is of course trivial to understand why - tech company from the Bay Area, of course most of its employees will slant progressive), not that "Biden pressured social media companies into censorship". Care to provide a real source for your conspiracy theory? And weren't there investigations by republicans in Congress that found nothing wrong in the whole laptop story? Why are you still stuck on it?

sgt101• 2 years ago

Cue FAANG buying telcos.

Effectively, AT&T returns (by a very strange and expensive route).

It will be very interesting to see what effect this has on networks globally.

yieldcrv• 2 years ago

I can’t wait till federal agencies that I don’t like get weakened with these deference rulings

At the moment I find it difficult and risky to achieve “standing” to getting the court challenges and then further take it to appeals

But I suspect it will get easier as the government stops even bothering with appeals court after these trial court cases get so consistent

ethagnawl• 2 years ago

Do DoH and DoT make the classic, pathological case of providers prioritizing traffic to certain domains much more difficult or even impossible?

daneel_w• 2 years ago

Realistically the "speed limits" are not imposed in name resolution, as that would offer only a temporary delay.

bandrami8• 2 years ago

I live in a non-net-neutral country (Sri Lanka). As far as I can tell the impact of the lack of net neutrality is that Meta pays for the portion of my phone data bill that accesses Meta properties. I've not yet heard a convincing explanation of why this is bad.

mexicocitinluez5• 2 years ago

Granted, Google is getting worse but a quick search will outline the reason:

"Net Neutrality policies are a national standard by which we ensure that broadband internet service is treated as an essential service. It prohibits internet service providers from blocking, throttling, or engaging in paid prioritization of lawful content. By classifying broadband service as a “telecommunications” service under Title II of the law, the FCC restores its oversight of internet service outages, national security threats in broadband networks, and consumer protection and regains key tools to promote broadband deployment."

I am admittedly not educated about Sri Lanka, but here in the US, companies fuck people over regularly. And as such, it's often important to even the playing the field.

If you want to create your own search engine, but Google decides to partner with every major ISP in the country and pay to throttle your site you'd probably find the whole "Why do we need net neutrality" arugment pretty convincing.

It's hard for me ot understand the position that we should just let these enormous companies do whatever they want and either you're a paid shill commenting on posts like this or just honestly don't have a clue.

bandrami8• 2 years ago

Hold on, that isn't really an accurate description is it? I'm originally from the US, and carriers have always been able to block or throttle customers for basically any reason. That's not a net neutrality question.

Net neutrality is about where (to use an American example) Netflix can run fiber directly to Comcast in return for Comcast not metering their customers' Netflix traffic.

louthy• 2 years ago

Now try to build a competitor to Meta. Oh, you can't afford to buy the portion of the data bill for every person on earth? Never mind.

Meta rules forever, no competition, ever again.

jvanderbot4• 2 years ago

At least in urban USA, I don't think the issue will be necessarily things like "Free access to Spotify", as most folks don't have data cap limits on home internet anymore.

I definitely think ISPs will downgrade access to home VPNs. They probably really enjoy watching what sites you visit, and are probably strongly pressured to do so.

blueflow• 2 years ago

What is a "Home VPN"? Like a layer 2 proxy where you use a 3rd party AS as exit?

jvanderbot4• 2 years ago

Personal VPN services, as opposed to those that provide access for workplaces. They can be differentiated by src/exit IPs.

0xy5• 2 years ago

Given all of the proponents of net neutrality's wild ideas for what ISPs would do if net neutrality was abolished were completely and utterly wrong when the Trump Administration ended net neutrality, what makes you think this new prediction is accurate?

As an example, net neutrality proponents widely predicted that ISPs would begin offering 'bundles' (for example pay separately for social media sites, pay for video sites etc) [1].

None of it happened. It was just a lie.

[1] https://blog.flashrouters.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Net...

[1] https://i.huffpost.com/gen/1567010/original.jpg

ParetoOptimal• 2 years ago

Is it not a huge regression that the power was given to ISPs to implement this at any time?

sebstefan2• 2 years ago

Who currently is not a "Proponent of net neutrality"? ISPs? I don't think I've ever met a real human who was against net neutrality.

What good would even come from repelling it?

You have one side saying terrible things can happen, and your argument for the other side is nothing more than "But it didn't happen... yet!"

What's the upside?

afavour7• 2 years ago

Maybe I'm being overly sensitive to this but a prediction that does not come true is not a "lie". It's just a prediction that turned out to be wrong.

The first image you linked to literally says "this COULD be the internet without net neutrality". And it's correct, it's exactly the kind of thing net neutrality enables.

jampekka2• 2 years ago

as most folks don't have data cap limits on home internet anymore

Not currently.

jvanderbot4• 2 years ago

Your claim is that most urban USA households who have internet access through an ISP have data caps? I have not seen data caps on any ISP I've used, essentially ever. Are you referring to cell phone plans?

transfire• 2 years ago

We are so fucked.

0xy5• 2 years ago

Ah yes, just like the time from 2017-2020 when the Trump Administration ended net neutrality and the internet disintegrated into paid bundles and speed limiting (net neutrality proponents swore that ISPs would implement these). [1]

Oh wait, none of that happened. It was a lie from the start.

[1] https://blog.flashrouters.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Net...

[1] https://i.huffpost.com/gen/1567010/original.jpg

kittikitti• 2 years ago

They should ban TikTok, Meta, Snapchat, X, and all of these social media apps that have AI that cause real societal harm. If they take away net neutrality, then be honest about which type of internet traffic needs to be shut down.

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42578237

alexfromapex• 2 years ago

Let's take the best thing that's happened to humanity and ruin it with corporatism...truly unbelievable if this ruling doesn't get overturned.

ndileas• 2 years ago

The internet is probably good on balance. The best thing to ever happen to humanity...forget it. The best thing to happen to humanity is most likely the practical harnessing of electricity for light and industry.

justwool2• 2 years ago

Look at the comments here that are all the middle fucking management and senior leadership bozos with centrism fueling their holier than thou speed run of boot licking.

“Well actually this is good for you”

sys_64738• 2 years ago

Doesn't say which court. It could be one of those loon district courts in TX for all we know.

blasphemers2• 2 years ago

This thread shows how much people misunderstand the key issue about this ruling. So many people talking about net-neutrality as if it was ever something actually implemented, when it was just a federal agency applying rules not designed or written for the internet and calling it net-neutrality. Net-neutrality is important, but it should be properly written into a law instead of just applying old regulations to the internet that were designed for a completely different system.

alcide• 2 years ago

Could you expand on this further? It would really provide some hope for me if there was a silver-lining. I’m concerned that this is a step in an inevitable beginning to the corporatization of the internet.

Court strikes down US net neutrality rules

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