US court ruling kills FCC network neutrality ruling from 2010

[Grave]

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

 

Source pdf: http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/3AF8B4D938CDEEA685257C6000532062/$file/11-1355-1474943.pdf

 

 

Any semblance of net neutrality in the United States is as good as dead. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Tuesday struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s 2010 order that imposed network neutrality regulations on wireline broadband services. The ruling is a major victory for telecom and cable companies who have fought all net neutrality restrictions vociferously for years.

 

The original FCC order said that wireline ISPs ”shall not block lawful content, applications, services or non-harmful devices, subject to reasonable network management” while also mandating that ISPs “shall not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful traffic over a consumer’s broadband Internet access service.”

 

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.

“Without broadband provider market power, consumers, of course, have options,” the court writes. “They can go to another broadband provider if they want to reach particular edge providers or if their connections to particular edge providers have been degraded.” For anyone who lives in a market with limited competition for home broadband services, the court does acknowledge that you might have some “difficulty” in finding another provider but says that it’s still not reason enough to restrict what an ISP can do when it comes to managing its own traffic.

 

 

What this means is that they can charge for certain website access, throttle your internet and charge data caps of some sort, charge the same amount of money for less bandwidth.. At least that's what it sounds like could happen.

 

See ya hicks, I'm leaving the U.S. by the end of 2014.

[Jack.EXE]

Welp, the US is being stupid again.

[sysloc]

T-Mobile, here I come

[shizngiggles]

Unfortunately, the FCC made the mistake of not laying out solid legal footing when creating the net neutrality rules. It's going to come back to bite them and the American people in the butt later down the road since this basically gives ISPs free reign over data throttling/prioritizing.

[Vitalius]

This. Is. Stupid.

Seriously. I live in Texas. The only ISP within 100 miles is CenturyLink. But I have a choice? Lies. Utter lies. 

Thankfully, Century Link doesn't have data caps or charge for certain websites. For now.

[Thecrazyswede]

How is this even allowed ?, how much did they pay the guys to get them to get this through ?, i feel for you sometimes america.

[MagnetSh0CK]

How is this even allowed ?, how much did they pay the guys to get them to get this through ?, i feel for you sometimes america.

The land of the free...free to be controlled. I would leave if I could keep my job.

[mc141]

Greedy bastards want us to pay for tv and limit progress. Its the dam money hungry investors most of the money we pay out goes into pockets instead of upgrading servers to handle the load. For example Why should they be aloud to make it 10 min to load a 30 second video on youtube when i pay for 15mbps down yet icould use there tv app at full bandwidth if they wanted.

[Kilerbomb]

I'm with charter, and they've never had data caps or throttling. I sure hope that doesn't change now...

[Blue fellow]

Calm down for a few weeks, guys. It only applies to the district of Columbia. Right at the top of the article: The United States Court of Appeals FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA (emphasis added). So, for now, the companies can't apply restrictions outside of D.C. FOR NOW. 

 

No, it went to the District of Columbia court because the FCC is based out of the District of Columbia. 

[ZetZet]

Free country ftw america yeah

[Cwazywazy]

With Cox we have no throttling but we do have a 250GB cap.

[Blue fellow]

The District of Columbia Court doesn't have jurisdiction over the rest of the United States. The Supreme court has jurisdiction over all of America, but not the District of Columbia Court.

 

This is a Federal court, it's ruling is nationwide. This is not the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, which is Washington D.C.'s local supreme court, similar to what states have. It is the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. 

[Fetzie]

No, you're confusing the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit with the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has the smallest jurisdiction in area out of all the U.S. court of appeals

 

Even so, other jurisdictions can use this as a precedent case.

[Blue fellow]

No, you're confusing the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit with the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has the smallest jurisdiction in area out of all the U.S. court of appeals

 

Smallest geographical area, which is as a result of the court having arguably the most important area with all the government organizations based out of DC. The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit does not have a geographical location but is based on it's case type. 

 

 

If the Supreme Court does not see this case, this ruling is nationwide. 

[Osmium]

So all in all, we've got a few months. 

 

And then life as we know it changes forever...

[TopWargamer]

It's a done deal now. We're all boned.

[HDZx]

Welp, the US is being stupid again.

 

They never stopped

[AndThenThereWas1]

Unless all the ISPs create a  monopoly and start making changes at the same time, this just wont work. At least one ISP will say "look at us, we have no restrictions" and everyone will go join their service. Lets for a moment imagine that they do all start putting in limitations, the only thing that this will do is increase the demand for services like google fiber and i highly doubt google fiber will join this idiocy.

[Fetzie]

Unless all the ISPs create a  monopoly and start making changes at the same time, this just wont work. At least one ISP will say "look at us, we have no restrictions" and everyone will go join their service. Lets for a moment imagine that they do all start putting in limitations, the only thing that this will do is increase the demand for services like google fiber and i highly doubt google fiber will join this idiocy.

 

What if there isn't any other ISP in your area, and they start to throttle traffic that they don't want you to get?

[Jasmin]

When I was small I believed that US is the land of free and awesome. Then I went there for some time and realised it's the land of free to bid and buyout justice. Cheers folks out there. I really hope it doesn't get you in a big way. I really hope it doesn't affect us here in EU as a side effect too. Ehh...

[_tylermatthew]

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/interactive/2014/01/14/raw-data-federal-appeals-court-ruling-on-fcc-net-neutrality-law/

Sorry to link to fox, it's just the first original copy I found. 

To address the conversation above, I believe the circuit courts ruling stands nation wide unless appealed, and the only potential for appeal is the supreme court, which only takes on the case if it decides to. So, and admittedly I am NOT at ALL a legal expert, it's my assumption that the ruling has to stand, because the Supreme Court is not 'obligated' to see the case.

If it the ruling didn't immediately apply, and it was directly appealed by a party in the case (the FCC) and if the case was never picked up by the supreme court, the ruling would never be enforced... which doesn't make much sense. I've been trying to read around to find a solid answer, but I haven't yet. 

I'm also trying to wade my way through the published ruling, but it's a pretty dull read. I cringed at this...
 

 

"example: when an edge provider such as YouTube transmits some sort of content—say, a video of a cat—to an end user, that content is broken down into packets of information, which are carried by the edge provider’s local access provider to the backbone network, which transmits these packets to the end user’s local access provider, which, in turn, transmits the information to the end user, who then views and hopefully enjoys the cat."
 

It's at best an attempt by some very out of touch judges to be cute and clever, and at worst a clear and loud example of how the court views the value balance and importance of the two sections of the internet described. (edge providers and end users, the two at great risk of harm by this ruling.) (Context: the document lays out that the "internet marketplace" should be broken down into four sectors, Edge Providers, End Users, Back bone networks, Broadband providers.)

Either way, while panic-button-pressing is never helpful, I think that the worst imagined outcomes are not so unlikely in the very near future, whether or not we can convince congress to recognize ISP's and backbones as 'common carriers' is pretty much the deciding factor for the long term. 

This does, by the way, impact everyone, no matter what nation you live in -- at least until web services can get their servers out of america. I don't know off had whether or not this is true, but for arguments sake, if all Reddit servers are based in the US, then Reddit's Broadband Provider can charge them a fee for 'international broadcasting' and in fact, that ISP can (in theory) in turn charge a different ISP in another country an access fee to those servers... or block the outgoing traffic to international IP's. While I'm sure there are ridiculously complicated treaty and trade agreements, international laws, and national laws for other countries that would impact the practice, I'd say most companies would be fairly protected in at least attempting it. 

Edit: trying to fix bad formatting in the quote. Copypasta from court rulings results in some cuhrazy formatting. 

[giancarloroyal]

A US appeals court just invalidated regulations from the FCC that said that telecom companies have to treat all Internet traffic equally. These rules essentially made it impossible for companies to pay the telecom companies for a faster route into people's computers.

Despite President Obama's support for the the "Open Internet Order", it is now completely legal for carriers such as AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile, to create a "tiered Internet", where companies who pay more can have access to faster connections, while companies who can not pay more are treated as second-class citizens, being stuck with slower connections.

Even worse, a ban on blocking connections entirely was also revoked.

While this can and will lead to new business models, and possibly (hopefully) cheaper Internet, this will also treat startups that could've become the next Twitter, like peasants. So, say goodbye to net neutrality, and hello to a tiered Internet.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/01/15/with-its-net-neutrality-case-against-verizon-the-fcc-loses-again/

[coen113]

what is new about this? pay more get better right?

[mrconan]

I dont see the problem, thats how its always been.