5 hours ago, iedoc said:

Just get a VPN, there's nothing they can really do anymore that will stop the internet from being really free. Even if this passes I don't think it's going to be a permanent thing. i'm sure it'll eventually get rolled back. John Thune, a republican (they are not all for it), is asking for supporters of net neutratlity to come up with a way to keep it from being repealed constantly like it has. I still have high hopes

"Just get a VPN" quickly translates into "Enjoy your 28.8k connection..." because, you know, throttling based on content/connection and all that. The kind of thing which Net Neutrality rules say you're not supposed to do to customers.

42 minutes ago, deltaKshatriya said:

This is typically due to high fixed costs, high barrier to entry...

I agree with you but once a investor sees that there is a huge customer base upset with how things work, they will feel it's safe to move in.

46 minutes ago, deltaKshatriya said:

but some parts of the US only have one ISP.

Yes, precisely. They do have competitors who just couldn't get a hold in that territory, if they throttle there networks and there competitors don't it could be the deciding factor.

People like water and electricity always take the path of least resistance, after all this is why game theory even exists.

Throttling is a double edged sword, it will provide the companies with means to make more money at the cost of customer satisfaction.

I've heard of net neutrality, but what does this all mean exactly?  Right now in Canada we pay a flat fee for a given internet download speed.  So what will this mean for folks like myself?

New Neutrality is, in short, "The internet" being neutral as to data transfer - Your connection from Computer A to Computer B is the same as if you were connecting from A to C. The ISP can't say "We don't like what is on Computer B, so we will block or throttle any connections through our network going to B"

Without Neutrality, then your ISP is free to say "We just happen to own the services hosted on Computer B, and Computer C is owned by our competitor, so you can either just use our service, or pay extra for us to allow you to connect to C as you used to do."

The largest flaw in the argument of "Dropping it will encourage competition" is that in places like the US, the ISPs are owned by what are now media companies, which sets them up for horrible exploitative practices, such as making Netflix nearly unusable (Unless the customer pays extra for a "Netflix Bundle", or unless Netflix themselves forks out more money directly) but making Their TV/Movie Streaming service not cost any extra... So the average consumer is going to look at this situation and say "Well, why would I pay more for Netflix when I could just use the service bundled with my existing connection?" This in turn makes the value of trying to start a competing ISP to break the regional monopolies a lot less feasible than Anti-Neutrality supporters make it out to be. 

- While there are lots of people being very vocal about the issue on tech sites, the vast majority of internet users are Not tech types, and aren't as likely to notice that their connection to "The internet" is being obstructed or that it is a bad thing. They'll turn their computer on, and "Go to the site to watch movies on"... 

1 hour ago, Luckless said:

making Their TV/Movie Streaming service not cost any extra

So basically the same thing that is already happening with the Playstation and Xbox. Games made by Sony interactive entertainment and Microsoft don't pay the extra royalties that the other publishers have to pay.(Each on there respective platforms)

1 hour ago, Scouting Ninja said:

So basically the same thing that is already happening with the Playstation and Xbox. Games made by Sony interactive entertainment and Microsoft don't pay the extra royalties that the other publishers have to pay.(Each on there respective platforms)

Sort of.

It's more like the phone company charging you more if you discuss politics in a long-distance call with your mother.  Or the post office making you put two stamps on your letters if you write them in cursive instead of typing them.

Up until now, internet providers have been functioning as "common carriers" or to use the stale old analogy, they were just the pipes through which the information flowed.  This was to their advantage, since various statutes and regulations provide protection for common carriers from the content they carry.  The phone company can not be found liable for the content of your conversations, say or the post office can not be held accountable for the content of letters you write.  The internet carriers (who in many cases devolved from phone companies in the first place) have insisted on this status so they would not be in court every day defending charges of child pornography of media copying.

Nowadays, the internet carriers are a part of vertically integrated mega-enterprises who both provide content and the wires that convey it to your eyes and ears.  They want to be able to leverage that to improve their bottom line, and as always resort to classic rent-seeking in collusion with willing political donation recipients.  Look up the definition of rent seeking, you'll see what's going on with net neutrality makes for a classic example of such undesirable action.

Perhaps the best analogy for what's going on right now would be to imagine if General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler were owned by Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhilips respectively, and charged different gas prices depending on the manufacturer of your car.  Good luck if you drive a Toyota or a Volkswagen, although I understand Ford may have cut a deal with Volvo in which Volvo pays Ford extra behind the scenes so their drivers can fill up like a regular Ford drivers.  GM has been lobbying for federal regulations to let them put up toll booths on the interstate highway system that only non-GM drivers have to pay, with a cut of revenues going to government programs that promote "green" technologies.  I should probably stop now, It's just making me bitter(er).

7 hours ago, Scouting Ninja said:

8 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

This is typically due to high fixed costs, high barrier to entry...

I agree with you but once a investor sees that there is a huge customer base upset with how things work, they will feel it's safe to move in.

8 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

but some parts of the US only have one ISP.

Yes, precisely. They do have competitors who just couldn't get a hold in that territory, if they throttle there networks and there competitors don't it could be the deciding factor.

People like water and electricity always take the path of least resistance, after all this is why game theory even exists.

 

Throttling is a double edged sword, it will provide the companies with means to make more money at the cost of customer satisfaction.

I don't entirely disagree, I just believe that while it's possible, it's just not likely that competition will arise in the face of throttling etc. The ISP business simply requires too much upfront capital, something that most businesses and most investors wouldn't be willing to put money into too easily unless they could see a good RoI. Plus there's just the fact that it takes years to build out networks. That's before we even get into the notion of peering with other ISPs, BGP, etc.

In short, it's not as simple as that really. There is a reason why similar services, like telephones etc. are regulated as utilities and it's primarily because they do behave as utilities do.  

19 hours ago, JTippetts said:

Because there was no internet before the net neutrality rules, right? 

Was there? Genuinely asking because my understanding was that the internet was always treated in a net neutral way in the early days. 

It was treated that way because there is little reason for most companies to do otherwise, hence the absence of a regulation enforcing it wasn't such a big deal.

Campaigners point out that American ISPs, which have near-monopoly power now, might abuse their power to favour the large services that pay them the most, like Netflix. Campaigners don't generally like to point out that they fought to ensure that BitTorrent traffic was also allowed to flow freely, helping infringe billions of dollars of copyrighted material.

Most of the world has done just fine without explicit net-neutrality laws - however, other countries seem to do a better job of offering a choice of ISPs so customers can vote with their wallet. Some do have various 'fast lane' services, the ethics of which are in question. (But again, people like to gloss over the ethics of existing large-scale illegal internet use.)

Seems a brief history lesson is in order.  

Back when these shenanigans started the cost was borne by schools and government groups. ISPs were businesses dedicated to internet services over telephone lines, not the megacorps.  The megacorp phone companies realized that instead of providing trunklines to ISP companies who connected the Internet together, they could remove those companies from the loop by providing the services themselves.  As external ISPs and competition started to dwindle, so did the benefits and perks. 

Seeing the market shift, there were multiple battles in the US.  The FCC started regulation, they told companies to simply keep it fair. There were a few cautions and fines issued, but not many.  Around 2005, I forget the case, but some telecoms sued, and in 2007 the telecoms won a ruling that allowed ISP many options, and limited FCC authority. The FCC was told to put together more comprehensive rules.

Mobile Internet was near-completely unregulated, but at the time the battle was between incumbent PalmOS, never-quite-enough Windows Mobile, and the latest challenger Blackberry.  Devices had Wifi, most had bluetooth, and some also had cellular radios, but Internet access over cell networks was expensive.  Then came the iPhone in 2007 and their deal with AT&T.  Devices were expensive, at $600+, where high end devices running PalmOS and Windows Mobile were often in the $300-$400 range. Phone plans with Internet were expensive, $60 for the cheapest plans with unlimited data. Contrast with many plans that were $30 for roughly 200 minutes that most people comfortably used, plus unlimited texting.  The highest-end plans were $100/month. Given the new technology the 2007 SCOTUS ruling specifically exempted the mobile market. 

These days people think of those same costs as cheap, with low-end smart phones costing more than the top-tier business phones of the era. Devices and services used to be far less money, and consumers can get far better deals if people ignore the unlimited-everything plans. A decade ago those unlimited plans were a premium option only purchased by corporate folk who needed them, but today they're the most popular option.

During the brief window of 2007-2008 while comprehensive rules were being written, wire-based ISPs in the US starting to block ports based on features, and both AT&T and Comcast had some patent applications (showcased on Slashdot and similar sites) for blocking or slowing Internet traffic based on various factors. The bandwidth killer at the time was file torrents, ISPs frequently engaged in torrent throttling and occasionally in "torrent scrambling", that ranged from closing Internet sockets mid-use to injecting Torrent packets with corrupted data. The masses responded with encrypted torrents that were harder to break, randomized port selection, and other techniques, so more intrusive detection and scanning was being introduced.

FCC finalized their comprehensive rules, and late 2008 most blocking and scrambling were put on hold.  A few companies tried a few more shenanigans, and the FCC changed the rules yet again in 2010.

Another set of lawsuits by Verizon and a few other carriers.  In the mean time as video streaming became increasingly popular, ISPs started abandoning their agreements and charging streaming companies more money even though (in theory) those costs are covered through mutual peering agreements. Google paid it as a cost of doing business.  Netflix went public about it, documenting how their traffic was being slowed, then they paid and documented how their speeds immediately went up.  People mostly didn't care.  The Verizon case wound their way through the courts, and by 2014 the 2010 rules were partially accepted, partially rejected.  The rejected parts said they were only valid if the companies were regulated as a common carrier.

So the FCC changed their rules again in response to the 2010 court ruling, declaring the companies a common carrier with the Open Internet Order of 2010.  

The Open Internet Order was challenged by a bunch of companies. They were consolidated and eventually heard by the SCOTUS. 

That is the issue I mentioned earlier in this discussion. By fighting the Open Internet Order all the way up to the SCOTUS, rulings from both 2016 and 2017 invalidate all the major arguments against common carrier status, and declare that both wired and wireless internet service should be regulated under common carrier rules.  

Already there are organizations poised to sue if the vote passes. Wired had an article about two hours ago how The Free Press has a lawsuit ready for immediate filing under the "arbitrary and capricious" rules, where governing rules cannot be based on politics, and they're planning on using the recent SCOTUS rulings as evidence.  The vote will take place in just a few hours, and they'll file immediately if the rules change.

Even if that case doesn't win, you can be sure the EFF and other organizations will bring their own cases using the SCOTUS rulings to sway the judges. Congress has not passed any new laws on the matter, and the facts haven't really changed, so the SCOTUS rulings will have enormous effect on how judges interpret the law.  Since the major arguments are exactly the ones the SCOTUS shot down in the 2015-2016 session, it is hard to imagine the updated FCC rules remaining.

I suspect the new rules will be shot down and the Open Internet Order will be official policy, but the FCC will not enforce the rules.