The Federal Communications Commission has scheduled an April 25 vote to restore net neutrality rules similar to the ones introduced during the Obama era and repealed under former President Trump.
"After the prior administration abdicated authority over broadband services, the FCC has been handcuffed from acting to fully secure broadband networks, protect consumer data, and ensure the Internet remains fast, open, and fair," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said today. "A return to the FCC's overwhelmingly popular and court-approved standard of net neutrality will allow the agency to serve once again as a strong consumer advocate of an open Internet."
[...]
In a filing with the FCC, Turner wrote that "ISPs have been incredibly bullish about the future of their businesses precisely because of the network investments they are making" and that the companies rarely, if ever, mention the impact of FCC regulation during calls with investors."We believe that the ISPs' own words to their shareholders, and to industry analysts through channels governed by the SEC, should be afforded significantly more weight than evidence-free tropes, vague threats, dubious aggregate capital expenditure tallies, or nonsensical math jargon foisted on the Commission this docket or elsewhere," Turner wrote.
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In a vote on the morning of Thursday, February 26, the FCC has approved Net Neutrality.
In a story on Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/02/fcc-votes-for-net-neutrality-a-ban-on-paid-fast-lanes-and-title-ii/) the FCC has voted to approve Net Neutrality and reclassify fixed and mobile broadband services under Title II as telecommunications services. As expected, the vote was along party lines.
It is expected that Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and others will sue to overturn the decision.
What say you Soylentils, is the reclassification of these services under Title II a good thing?
Several news sites are reporting on India's support of net neutrality including the BBC, Fortune, The Hindu, and Ars Technica, to name a few. At question was Facebook's attempt at zero-rating their own 'free' basics service. Zero-rating schemes are where certain services are not counted against data caps while others do, essentially creating a tiered Internet and increasing the barriers for certain sites or services.
According to the decision, discriminiatory tariffs are disallowed, paving the way for continued access for all. The decision does not prohibit providing free or limited free net access, provided it can be used to access any content, not just pre-approve sites.
In his final days as the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler has accused AT&T and Verizon Wireless of violating net neutrality rules with "zero-rating" policies:
Wheeler described his views in a letter to US senators who had expressed concern about the data cap exemptions, or "zero-rating." FCC Wireless Telecommunications Bureau staff today also issued a report concluding that AT&T and Verizon zero-rating programs are unfair to competitors. Both Wheeler's letter and the staff report can be read in full here.
The main issue is that AT&T and Verizon allow their own video services (DirecTV and Go90, respectively) to stream on their mobile networks without counting against customers' data caps, while charging other video providers for the same data cap exemptions. The FCC also examined T-Mobile USA's zero-rating program but found that it poses no competitive harms because T-Mobile offers data cap exemptions to third parties free of charge. T-Mobile also "provides little streaming video programming of its own," giving it less incentive to disadvantage video companies that need to use the T-Mobile network, the FCC said.
Also at TechCrunch, Washington Post, CNET, and The Hill.
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
In February 2015, the FCC's then-Democratic leadership led by Chairman Tom Wheeler classified broadband as "telecommunications," superseding the previous treatment of broadband as a less heavily regulated "information service." This was crucial in the rulemaking process because telecommunications providers are regulated as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act, the authority used by the FCC to impose bans on blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.
Thus, when the FCC's new Republican majority voted on May 18 to start the process of eliminating the current net neutrality rules, the commission's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) also proposed redefining broadband as an information service once again.
To make sure the net neutrality rollback survives court challenges, newly appointed FCC Chairman Ajit Pai must justify his decision to redefine broadband less than three years after the previous change. He argues that broadband isn't telecommunications because it isn't just a simple pipe to the Internet. Broadband is an information service because ISPs give customers the ability to visit social media websites, post blogs, read newspaper websites, and use search engines to find information, the FCC's new proposal states. Even if the ISPs don't host any of those websites themselves, broadband is still an information service under Pai's definition because Internet access allows consumers to reach those websites.
The Web began dying in 2014. André Staltz writes about how and why. In a nutshell, traffic from mobile and tablet devices now surpasses that from regular desktop computers and of that traffic the overwhelming majority goes to either Faecebook or Google. Amazon is also in there. None of them have any interest in defending the open Web any more. Rather the situation is the opposite, they are aiming to carve out a section and establish very isolated walled gardens. Net Neutrality, or the lack thereof, lie at the heart of their plans based on the direction they have moved since 2014.
I used natural language processing techniques to analyze net neutrality comments submitted to the FCC from April-October 2017, and the results were disturbing.
NY Attorney General Schneiderman estimated that hundreds of thousands of Americans' identities were stolen and used in spam campaigns that support repealing net neutrality. My research found at least 1.3 million fake pro-repeal comments, with suspicions about many more. In fact, the sum of fake pro-repeal comments in the proceeding may number in the millions. In this post, I will point out one particularly egregious spambot submission, make the case that there are likely many more pro-repeal spambots yet to be confirmed, and estimate the public position on net neutrality in the "organic" public submissions.
The author's key findings:
- One pro-repeal spam campaign used mail-merge to disguise 1.3 million comments as unique grassroots submissions.
- There were likely multiple other campaigns aimed at injecting what may total several million pro-repeal comments into the system.
- It's highly likely that more than 99% of the truly unique comments³ were in favor of keeping net neutrality.
- F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
- FCC votes to repeal net neutrality rules
- "Net neutrality is the secret sauce that has made the internet awesome"
- FCC overturns net neutrality rules, but supporters pledge to continue fight
WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to dismantle rules regulating the businesses that connect consumers to the internet, granting broadband companies the power to potentially reshape Americans' online experiences.
The agency scrapped the so-called net neutrality regulations that prohibited broadband providers from blocking websites or charging for higher-quality service or certain content. The federal government will also no longer regulate high-speed internet delivery as if it were a utility, like phone service.
The action reversed the agency's 2015 decision, during the Obama administration, to have stronger oversight over broadband providers as Americans have migrated to the internet for most communications. It reflected the view of the Trump administration and the new F.C.C. chairman that unregulated business will eventually yield innovation and help the economy.
It will take weeks for the repeal to go into effect, so consumers will not see any of the potential changes right away. But the political and legal fight started immediately. Numerous Democrats on Capitol Hill called for a bill that would reestablish the rules, and several Democratic state attorneys general, including Eric T. Schneiderman of New York, said they would file a suit to stop the change.
Senate Approves Overturning FCC's Net Neutrality Repeal
The Senate approved a resolution Wednesday to nullify the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rollback, dealing a symbolic blow to the FCC's new rule that remains on track to take effect next month.
The final vote was 52-47. As expected, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Me., joined Democrats in voting to overturn the FCC's controversial decision. But two other Republicans — Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — also voted in favor of the resolution of disapproval.
The outcome is unlikely to derail the FCC's repeal of Obama-era rules that restrict Internet service providers' ability to slow down or speed up users' access to specific websites and apps.
The legislative victory is fleeting because the House does not intend to take similar action, but Democrats are planning to carry the political fight over Internet access into the 2018 midterms.
DannyB: Hopefully we don't all get slower connections so that ISPs can use the bandwidth to create paid prioritization.
Also at The Hill and TechCrunch.
See also: Everything you need to know about Congress's net neutrality resolution
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3941
In an interview just prior to leaving the FCC this month, former Commissioner Mignon Clyburn took aim at the agency where she worked for nearly nine years, saying it has abandoned its mission to safeguard consumers and protect their privacy and speech.
Clyburn, a net neutrality proponent who served as interim FCC chief in 2013, equated the FCC's mission to the Starfleet Prime Directive, saying the agency's top priority is to ensure "affordable, efficient, and effective" access to communications—a directive it has effectively deserted under the new administration, working instead to advance the causes of "last-mile monopolies."
Clyburn spoke to Ars Technica's Jon Brodkin during a phone interview shortly before she left the agency this month.
"I'm an old Trekkie," she said. "I go back to my core, my prime directive of putting consumers first."
US Officially Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
The net neutrality rules said companies had to treat all data equally.
Enacted in 2015, the rules sought to stop providers giving preferential treatment to sites and services that paid them to accelerate their data.
And critics fear repealing them may see consumers charged extra for anything more than the most basic service.
Public protests greeted the Federal Communications Commission's plan to end use of the rules, with many saying it could have an impact on free speech.
But, in December, the FCC voted to repeal the rules. And the regulations expired on Monday.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44438812
Oddly The Trump FCC Doesn't Much Want To Talk About Why It Made Up A DDOS Attack
Last week, e-mails obtained via FOIA request revealed that yes, FCC staffers routinely misled journalists in order to prop up this flimsy narrative, apparently in the belief they could conflate consumer outrage with criminal activity. The motive? It was likely for the same reason the FCC refused to do anything about the identity theft and bogus comments we witnessed during the repeal's open comment period: they wanted to try and downplay the massive, bipartisan public opposition to what the lion's share of Americans thought was an idiotic, corruption-fueled repeal of popular consumer protections.
[...] One of the FCC staffers accused of making false statements about the DDOS attack was recently departed FCC IT chief David Bray. Original reports stated that Bray and other staffers had been feeding this flimsy DDOS narrative to gullible reporters for years, then pointing to these inaccurate stories as "proof" the nonexistent attack occurred. Under fire in the wake of last week's report, Bray first doubled down on his claims, adding that the 2014 "attack" hadn't been publicized because former FCC boss Tom Wheeler covered it up. But Wheeler himself subsequently stated in a report late last week that this was unequivocally false:
"When I was in the greenroom waiting to come in here, I got an email from David Bray, who said 'I never said that you told us not to talk about this and to cover up,' which was the term that got used. Which of course is logical, because as the Gizmodo article that you referenced pointed out, A) FCC officials who were there at the time said it didn't happen, [and] B) the independent IT contractors that were hired said it didn't happen. So if it didn't happen it's hard to have a cover up for something that didn't happen."
California gov. signs nation's strictest net neutrality rules into law:
California Governor Jerry Brown today signed net neutrality legislation into law, setting up a legal showdown pitting his state against Internet service providers and the Federal Communications Commission.
The California net neutrality bill, previously approved by the state Assembly and Senate despite protests from AT&T and cable lobbyists, imposes rules similar to those previously enforced by the FCC.
"While the Trump administration does everything in its power to undermine our democracy, we in California will continue to do what's right for our residents," California State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), author of the net neutrality bill, said today.
California's legal authority to impose its own net neutrality rules will be tested in court. The FCC's recent repeal of federal rules said that states aren't allowed to impose net neutrality rules, and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai called California's net neutrality bill "illegal."
Submitted via IRC for BoyceMagooglyMonkey
After removing all duplicate and fake comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission last year, a Stanford researcher has found that 99.7 percent[pdf] of public comments—about 800,000 in all—were pro-net neutrality.
"With the fog of fraud and spam lifted from the comment corpus, lawmakers and their staff, journalists, interested citizens and policymakers can use these reports to better understand what Americans actually said about the repeal of net neutrality protections and why 800,000 Americans went further than just signing a petition for a redress of grievances by actually putting their concerns in their own words," Ryan Singel, a media and strategy fellow at Stanford University, wrote in a blog post Monday.
Submitted via IRC for Fnord666
Entire broadband industry sues Vermont to stop state net neutrality law
The nation's largest broadband industry lobby groups have sued Vermont to stop a state law that requires ISPs to follow net neutrality principles in order to qualify for government contracts.
The lawsuit[pdf] was filed yesterday in US District Court in Vermont by mobile industry lobby CTIA, cable industry lobby NCTA, telco lobby USTelecom, the New England Cable & Telecommunications Association, and the American Cable Association (ACA), which represents small and mid-size cable companies.
CTIA, NCTA, USTelecom, and the ACA also previously sued California to stop a much stricter net neutrality law, but they're now expanding the legal battle to multiple states. These lobby groups represent all the biggest mobile and home Internet providers in the US and hundreds of smaller ISPs. Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile US, Sprint, Cox, Frontier, and CenturyLink are among the groups' members.
While the California law applies to all consumer broadband providers, Vermont's law is narrower and may be more likely to survive legal challenge. Vermont's law creates a process in which ISPs can certify that they comply with net neutrality guidelines, and it says that state agencies may only buy Internet service from ISPs that obtain those certifications.
Vermont Governor Phil Scott, a Republican, also issued an executive order[pdf] imposing similar requirements on state agencies. The broadband industry lawsuit asks the court to rule that both the Vermont law and executive order are preempted by federal law.
The lobby groups point to the Federal Communications Commission repeal of US-wide net neutrality rules because the FCC order claims the authority to preempt state net neutrality laws.
[...] The state law is also preempted because of "the inherently interstate nature" of broadband, the complaint said.
To get certified for state contracts, Vermont says that ISPs must demonstrate that they do not block or throttle lawful Internet traffic or engage in paid prioritization. The certification also prohibits ISPs from "engaging in deceptive or misleading marketing practices that misrepresent the treatment of Internet traffic or content to its customers." ISPs seeking certification also have to publicly disclose accurate information about their network management practices, network performance, and the commercial terms of their Internet service.
[...] The lawsuit could serve as a test case for other states that are attempting to regulate net neutrality indirectly through state contracts. Besides Vermont, the governors of Hawaii, Montana, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island have also issued executive orders to impose net neutrality rules on ISPs that provide Internet service to state government agencies.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
FCC Chairman Pai celebrates Congress failing to bring back net neutrality
As one Congress ends and another begins, many are looking forward to a rebalancing of power — especially in the House of Representatives, which Democrats handily retook in November. But FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is more pleased with what the House failed to do — namely, roll back his repeal of net neutrality rules.
To be fair, he does have reason to celebrate; no one likes to see their work undone. But a statement issued today tells a very selective message about congressional opposition to his master plan.
"I'm pleased that a strong bipartisan majority of the U.S. House of Representatives declined to reinstate heavy-handed Internet regulation," Pai said. The "heavy-handed" remark is the usual boilerplate in reference to 2015's rules, which used what the current FCC calls "depression-era" regulations to exert control over internet providers. That aspersion doesn't really make sense, as I've noted before.
And the "strong bipartisan majority" bears a bit of explanation as well. Indeed, the Democrats fell about 30 short of the votes they needed to put the Congressional Review Act into effect and undo the FCC's order. But that was only after the Senate, by a similar "strong bipartisan majority," as Pai would no doubt put it, voted for the rollback. No mention of that in his statement.
Evaluation of the First Two Years of the Net Neutrality Enforcement Situation in the EU
According to a report, The Net Neutrality Situation in the EU: Evaluation of the First Two Years of Enforcement, by the epicenter.works for digital rights in Vienna, Austria, Finland and Bulgaria remain the only two countries not violating network neutrality principles. The report covers the last two and a half years in the European Union, focusing on various practices including but not limited to zero-rating, differential pricing, and port blocking.
The principle of net neutrality is enshrined in the European Union in Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2015 laying down measures concerning open internet access and amending Directive 2002/22/EC on universal service and users' rights relating to electronic communications networks and services and Regulation (EU) No 531/2012 on roaming on public mobile communications networks within the Union, which went into effect on 30 April 2016 (hereafter "the Regulation") 1 . As an EU Regulation, it requires no transposition into national law and enjoys primacy in application over national laws. It applies equally in all 28 EU memaer states and the three states of the European Economic Area (EEA) (Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein). The national regulatory authorities (NRAs) and other competent authorities are tasked with the enforcement and supervision of this law.
The Regulation contains a review clause by which the European Commission has to provide an evaluation report of the net neutrality provisions of the Regulation by 30 April 2019. To prepare this review, the Commission has tasked the law firm Bird & Bird, in consortium with the research and consultancy company Ecorys, to conduct a review based on interviews among various stakeholders from NRAs, the telecom industry, content and application providers (CAPs), and consumer protection as well as civil society organisations 2 . In an open letter, several organisations have expressed concerns aaout a confict of interest, as Bird & Bird is representing telecom companies in court cases arought ay regulators and civil society which are aased on the same regulation Bird & Bird now tasked with collecting information from these stakeholders on 3.
[...]
11 Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 Novemaer 2015 laying down measures concerning open internet access (2015)
2 https://etendering.ted.europa.eu/cft/cft-display.html?cftId=2319
3 https://epicenter.works/document/1285
Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica reports that the House Energy And Commerce committee approved the Save The Internet Act, which rolls back the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC)* 2017 repeal of its 2015 order on network neutrality[PDF].
The Ars Technica article states:
Democrats in the US House of Representatives yesterday rejected Republican attempts to weaken a bill that would restore net neutrality rules.
[...]
Commerce Committee Republicans repeatedly introduced amendments that would weaken the bill but were consistently rebuffed by the committee's Democratic majority. "The Democrats beat back more than a dozen attempts from Republicans to gut the bill with amendments throughout the bill's markup that lasted 9.5 hours," The Hill reported yesterday.Republican amendments would have weakened the bill by doing the following:
- Exempt all 5G wireless services from net neutrality rules.
- Exempt all multi-gigabit broadband services from net neutrality rules.
- Exempt from net neutrality rules any ISP that builds broadband service in any part of the US that doesn't yet have download speeds of at least 25Mbps and upload speeds of at least 3Mbps.
- Exempt from net neutrality rules any ISP that gets universal service funding from the FCC's Rural Health Care Program.
- Exempt ISPs that serve 250,000 or fewer subscribers from certain transparency rules that require public disclosure of network management practices.
- Prevent the FCC from limiting the types of zero-rating (i.e., data cap exemptions) that ISPs can deploy.
[amendment links above are all PDF]
Submitted via IRC for AnonymousLuser
Deep Packet Inspection a threat to net neutrality, say campaigners
Some of Europe's biggest ISPs and mobile operators stand accused of using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology to quietly undermine net neutrality rules and user privacy.
News of the troubling allegation first reached the public domain earlier this year in an analysis by German organisation epicenter.works. It claimed it had detected 186 products offered by providers that appeared to involve applying DPI to their customers' traffic. Deep packet inspection filters network traffic by looking at the contents of data packets.
[...] Now a group of academics and digital rights campaigners headed by European Digital Rights (EDRi) has sent EU authorities an open letter[pdf] pointing out the implications of this. The EDRi letter states:
Several of these products by mobile operators with large market shares are confirmed to rely on DPI because their products offer providers of applications or services the option of identifying their traffic via criteria such as Domain names, SNI, URLs or DNS snooping.
EU regulation outlaws DPI for anything other than basic traffic management, but it seems that providers in many countries have found a grey area that allows them to bend – and increasingly bypass – those rules.
The frontline of this is something called 'zero rating' whereby mobile operators attract subscribers by offering free access to a specific application – a streaming service would be one example – without that counting towards their data allowance.
By its nature, this favours larger application providers, in effect busting the principle of net neutrality that says that all applications and services should be given equal prioritisation across networks.
DPI is the technology that makes this possible because:
DPI allows IAS providers to identify and distinguish traffic in their networks in order to identify traffic of specific applications or services for the purpose such as billing them differently throttling or prioritising them over other traffic.
States can set own net neutrality rules, court says
A federal appeals court on Tuesday issued a mixed ruling on the Federal Communications Commission repeal of Obama-era net neutrality rules. The court upheld the FCC's repeal of the rules, but struck down a key provision that blocked states from passing their own net neutrality protections.
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals also remanded another piece of the order back to the FCC and told the agency to take into consideration other issues, like the effect that the repeal of protections will have on public safety. (See below for the full text of the court's decision in the case, Mozilla v. Federal Communications Commission.)
The Republican-led FCC voted in 2017 to roll back the popular rules, which prohibited broadband companies from blocking or slowing access to the internet in a 3-2 vote along party lines. The rules also barred internet providers from charging companies to deliver their content faster.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai applauded the decision as not only a win for the agency but also a "victory for consumers, broadband deployment, and the free and open Internet." He said the court not only upheld its repeal of the rules, but it also upheld the agency's so-called "transparency rule," which requires broadband providers to disclose when they're making any changes to their service.
[...] The case pitted Mozilla and several other internet companies, such as Etsy and Reddit, as well as 22 state attorneys general, against the Republican-led FCC. They argued that the FCC hadn't provided sufficient reason for repealing the rules.
A consultant working for the US broadband industry's lobbying group "Broadband for America" sent over 1 million comments to the FCC opposing net neutrality.
Many of the names and email addresses in these comments are tied to a single data breach. Here's how Buzzfeed figured out what happened.
Tech industry asks US court to reconsider net neutrality ruling
In petitions filed with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Friday, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, internet trade group INCOMPAS and various advocacy groups asked the three-judge panel to rehear the case or the full appeals court to take up the issue.
[...] Members of the trade groups include Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Alphabet Inc.
Advocacy groups filing petitions include Public Knowledge, Free Press and the Centre for Democracy & Technology.
"The FCC abdicated its ability to regulate the behaviour of ISPs for the first time in its history. As a consequence, ISPs are permitted to block or throttle Internet access, demand pay-to-play ransom from Internet edge providers, or otherwise interfere with end users’ access to the Internet," the petition said.
FCC spokeswoman Tina Pelkey said the agency is confident the court's decision "will stand and that we will continue to have a free and open Internet moving forward."
The appeals court, in its October decision, also ruled the FCC erred when it declared that states cannot pass their own net neutrality laws and ordered the agency to review some key aspects of its 2017 repeal of rules set by the Obama administration, including public safety implications and how its decision will impact a government subsidy programme for low-income users.
The 2017 FCC 3-2 vote handed internet providers sweeping powers to recast how Americans use the internet, as long as they disclose changes. The new rules took effect in June 2018 but ISPs have yet to change how users access the internet.
'Deficiencies' that broke FCC commenting system in net neutrality fight detailed by GAO:
Today marks the conclusion of a years-long saga that started when John Oliver did a segment on Net Neutrality that was so popular that it brought the FCC's comment system to its knees. Two years later it is finally near addressing all the issues brought up in an investigation from the General Accountability Office.
The report covers numerous cybersecurity and IT issues, some of which the FCC addressed quickly, some not so quickly and some it's still working on.
"Today's GAO report makes clear what we knew all along: the FCC's system for collecting public input has problems," Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel told TechCrunch. "The agency needs to fully fix this mess because this is the way the FCC is supposed to take input from the public. But as this report demonstrates, we have real work to do."
The linked article chronicles several events and prevarications by the FCC and observations by critics. It then continues:
Judge Orders FCC to Hand Over IP Addresses Linked to Fake Net Neutrality Comments:
A Manhattan federal judge has ruled the Federal Communications Commission must provide two reporters access to server logs that may provide new insight into the allegations of fraud stemming from agency’s 2017 net neutrality rollback.
A pair of New York Times reporters—Nicholas Confessore and Gabriel Dance—sued the FCC under the Freedom of Information Act after it refused their request to view copies of the logs. The logs will show, among other details, the originating IP addresses behind the millions of public comments sent to the agency ahead of the December 2017 net neutrality vote.
The FCC attempted to quash the paper’s request but failed to persuade District Judge Lorna Schofield, who wrote that, despite the privacy concerns raised by the agency, releasing the logs may help clarify whether fraudulent activity interfered with the comment period, as well as whether the agency’s decision-making process is “vulnerable to corruption.”
The FCC argued in court that making the millions of IP addresses contained in the logs publicly accessible would constitute an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” And while Schofield didn’t entirely disagree, she said the agency had failed to adequately spell out how anyone would be harmed by the disclosure.
Regardless, Schofield said she also decided to weigh any hypothetical harm against the potential value of the information to the public. “In this case, the public interest in disclosure is great because the importance of the comment process to agency rulemaking is great,” she said, adding: “If genuine public comment is drowned out by a fraudulent facsimile, then the notice-and-comment process has failed.”
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will step down on January 20
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai will step down from his post on January 20, the day President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated, he announced Monday.
The announcement means that the FCC could reach a Democratic majority sooner than it would otherwise be able to. Pai's term was slated to expire in June 2021, though Biden will be able to choose a Democrat to chair the commission once in office. Commissioners must be confirmed by the Senate.
[...] Pai's decision to step down could have significant implications on net neutrality, an issue that helped define his term as chairman. In 2017, Pai voted with his fellow Republican commissioners to remove rules that prohibited internet providers from from blocking or slowing traffic to particular sites and offering higher speed "lanes" at higher prices. Many major internet providers have not yet taken advantage of that rule change, however.
Also at 9to5Mac.
California can enforce net neutrality law, judge rules in loss for ISPs:
California can start enforcing the net neutrality law it enacted over two years ago, a federal judge ruled yesterday in a loss for Internet service providers.
Broadband-industry lobby groups' motion for a preliminary injunction was denied by Judge John Mendez of US District Court for the Eastern District of California. Mendez did not issue a written order but announced his ruling at a hearing, and his denial of the ISPs' motion was noted in the docket.
Mendez reportedly was not swayed by ISPs' claims that a net neutrality law isn't necessary because they haven't been blocking or throttling Internet traffic.
"I have heard that argument and I don't find it persuasive," Mendez said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "It's going to fall on deaf ears. Everyone has been on their best behavior since 2018, waiting for whatever happened in the DC Circuit [court case over the FCC's repeal of net neutrality]. I don't place weight on the argument that everything is fine and we don't need to worry."
Mendez, who was nominated by President Bush in 2008, also said, "This decision today is a legal decision and shouldn't be viewed in the political lens. I'm not expressing anything on the soundness of the policy. That might better be resolved by Congress than by federal courts."
The industry lobby groups' lawsuit against California will continue, but the state can enforce its law while the case is still pending. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra praised the ruling, saying it means that "California can soon begin enforcement of SB 822," the net neutrality law.
"The ability of an Internet service provider to block, slow down, or speed up content based on a user's ability to pay for service degrades the very idea of a competitive marketplace and the open transfer of information at the core of our increasingly digital and connected world," Becerra said.
Also at The New York Times, The Verge, and The Hill, among others.
ISPs can't find any judges who will block California net neutrality law:
The broadband industry has lost another attempt to block California's net neutrality law.
After ISP lobby groups' motion for a preliminary injunction was denied last year in US District Court for the Eastern District of California, they appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. A three-judge panel unanimously upheld the ruling against the broadband industry in January, after which the industry groups petitioned for a rehearing with all of the appellate court's judges (called an "en banc" hearing).
The answer came back Wednesday: No judges on the appeals court thought the broadband industry's petition for a rehearing was even worth voting on.
"The full court has been advised of the petition for rehearing en banc and no judge has requested a vote on whether to rehear the matter en banc. The petition for rehearing en banc is denied," the order said.
California can thus continue enforcing its net neutrality law while the case continues.
The broadband industry has abandoned its lawsuit against California's net neutrality law after a series of court rulings went against Internet service providers.
The four broadband lobby groups that sued California "hereby stipulate to the dismissal of this action without prejudice," they wrote in a filing Wednesday in US District Court for the Eastern District of California. The ISP groups are ACA Connects (formerly the American Cable Association), CTIA-The Wireless Association, NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, and USTelecom.
"After losing three times in federal court, the ISPs have finally realized that they can't overturn California's net neutrality law and that they should just stop trying," Stanford Law Professor Barbara van Schewick wrote, calling the development "a historic win for Californians and the open Internet."
Europe cracks down on data cap exemptions in update to net neutrality rules:
European telecom regulator BEREC has updated its net neutrality guidelines to include a strict ban on zero-rating practices that exempt specific apps or categories of apps from data caps imposed by Internet service providers.
The document published Tuesday provides guidance to national regulatory authorities on their "obligations to closely monitor and ensure compliance with the rules to safeguard equal and non-discriminatory treatment of traffic in the provision of Internet access services and related end-users' rights." BEREC stands for Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications.
"Despite intense lobbying from big carriers and giant platforms, BEREC voted to clearly ban zero-rating offers that benefit select apps or categories of apps by exempting them from people's monthly data caps," Stanford Law Professor Barbara van Schewick wrote. "The ban applies whether the app pays to be included or not, closing a loophole in the draft guidelines."
[...] The new BEREC guidelines came in response to a September 2021 Court of Justice ruling that "zero tariff" options that distinguish between types of Internet traffic "on the basis of commercial considerations" violate Europe's Open Internet rules requiring "equal treatment of traffic, without discrimination or interference."
In the new guidelines, BEREC said it "considers any differentiated pricing practices which are not application-agnostic to be inadmissible for IAS [Internet access service] offers, such as applying a zero price to ISPs' own applications or CAPs [content, applications, and services] subsidizing their own data." Additionally, a "price-differentiated offer where all applications are blocked (or slowed down) once the data cap is reached except for the application(s) for which zero price or a different price than all other traffic is applied would infringe" European rules, BEREC said. The rules apply to both mobile and fixed Internet service.
Big Telecom's Quest To Tax Big Tech For No Reason Will Cause Massive Internet Instability, Group Warns
For much of the last year, European telecom giants have been pushing for a tax on Big Tech company profits. They've tried desperately to dress it up as a reasonable adult policy proposal, but it's effectively just the same thing we saw during the U.S. net neutrality wars: telecom monopolies demanding other people pay them an additional troll toll — for no coherent reason.
To sell captured lawmakers on the idea, telecom giants have falsely claimed that Big Tech companies get a "free ride" on the Internet (just as they did during the U.S. net neutrality wars). To fix this problem they completely made up, Big Telecom argues Big Tech should be forced to help pay for the kind of broadband infrastructure upgrades the telecoms have routinely neglected for years.
It's a big, dumb, con. But yet again, telecom lobbyists have somehow convinced regulators that this blind cash grab is somehow sensible, adult policy, dubbing it their "sender pays" initiative. Dutifully, European Commission's industry chief Thierry Breton said last September he would launch a consultation on this "fair share" payment scheme in early 2023, ahead of any proposed legislation.
Shortly after coming into office, President Joe Biden moved to restore net neutrality. He signed a sweeping executive order to promote competition, calling on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to bring back the Obama-era internet rules rolled back by the Trump administration.
But close to two years later, the FCC remains deadlocked with only four of its five commissioner slots filled — and Biden may be running out of time.
Biden's pick for a new FCC commissioner was Gigi Sohn, a former FCC official and public interest advocate. Sohn would have secured a long-awaited Democratic majority at the agency. After she was nominated in October 2021, however, a well-funded opposition organized a brutal opposition campaign against her. The culture-war campaign called Sohn an "extremist" and a "censor" because of past tweets criticizing Fox News and former President Donald Trump, largely ignoring her decades-long professional record. After more than 16 months and three separate confirmation hearings, Sohn withdrew her nomination earlier this month, citing the "unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks" by broadband and cable lobbyists and their friends.
It's unlikely Biden will pick someone as critical of cable companies again — but Republicans could try to thwart even a centrist candidate
Now, the White House has been forced to start over, prolonging a vacancy that continues to obstruct the administration's broadband agenda. The White House hasn't announced a new nominee or when they're hoping to confirm someone, but it's unlikely that Biden would pick someone as critical of cable companies as Sohn. Republicans and "dark money" groups have already proved that they're willing to spend millions to block progressive nominees. With so little time left in Biden's first term, stakeholders may even try to thwart a more moderate nominee, especially if there's an opportunity to continue the stalemate past the 2024 election.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
On Thursday, the FCC voted 3-2 to reinstate "net neutrality" rules. The proposal will essentially classify internet service providers as public utilities governed under Title II instead of Title I. The FCC claims the rules would prevent broadband providers from blocking or throttling traffic unless companies paid more, among other things.
Today's vote is the second time the Commission has voted to assign itself as the governor and regulator of private ISPs. The first time was in 2015 under the Obama administration. Those rules were then repealed in 2017, also along party lines, during the Trump administration.
Despite protests and cries that it was the end of a "free internet," nothing much seemed to change, and the fervor died out. There were some early lawsuits and claims alleging throttling, but nothing came of them. Eventually several states including California and Montana created their own net neutrality laws and mandates.
While proponents still claim that the government needs to regulate ISPs to prevent them from trying any funny business, FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel says it is now a matter of "national security."
"Today, there is no expert agency ensuring that the internet is fast, open, and fair... Today, we begin a process to make this right. We propose to reinstate enforceable, bright-line rules to prevent blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization," said Rosenworcel. "When we stripped state-affiliated companies from China of their authority to operate in the United States, that action did not extend to broadband services, thanks to the retreat from Title II. This is a national security loophole that needs to be addressed."
The Federal Communications Commission clarified its net neutrality rules to prohibit more kinds of fast lanes.
While the FCC voted to restore net neutrality rules on April 25, it didn't release the final text of the order until yesterday. The final text has some changes compared to the draft version released a few weeks before the vote.
[...] Advocates warned that mobile carriers could use the 5G technology called "network slicing" to create fast lanes for categories of apps, like online gaming, and charge consumers more for plans that speed up those apps. This isn't just theoretical: Ericsson, a telecommunications vendor that sells equipment to the major carriers, has said the carriers could get more money from gamers by charging "up to $10.99 more for a guaranteed gaming experience on top of their 5G monthly subscription."
[...] The final FCC order released yesterday addresses that complaint.
"We clarify that a BIAS [Broadband Internet Access Service] provider's decision to speed up 'on the basis of Internet content, applications, or services' would 'impair or degrade' other content, applications, or services which are not given the same treatment," the FCC's final order said.
The "impair or degrade" clarification means that speeding up is banned because the no-throttling rule says that ISPs "shall not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of Internet content, application, or service."
[...] In one FCC filing, AT&T promoted network slicing as a way "to better meet the needs of particular business applications and consumer preferences than they could over a best-efforts network that generally treats all traffic the same." AT&T last week started charging mobile customers an extra $7 per month for faster wireless data speeds, but this would likely comply with net neutrality rules because the extra speed applies to all broadband traffic rather than just certain types of online applications.
[...] Broadband providers plan to sue the FCC in an effort to block the regulation.
Previously on SoylentNews:
FCC Restores Net Neutrality Rules that Ban Blocking and Throttling in 3-2 Vote - 20240426
Cable Lobby Vows "Years of Litigation" to Avoid Bans on Blocking and Throttling - 20240404
(Score: 3, Interesting) by gznork26 on Friday April 05 2024, @01:37AM (6 children)
I was thinking about the situation from the perspective of the companies who own the infrastructure. They could claim that any data that enters the private property of their hardware must abide by their rules, so they can do what they want, like reroute your packets to the NULL device. If the government wants to usurp their property rights, it's a 'taking' for which they should be compensated; if not, they can blackmail the government or other parties into paying protection money to preserve those packets. The old arguments have gotten stale, so let's hear some new ones!
Khipu were Turing complete.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday April 05 2024, @02:26AM
They have to be careful about that, though, because the flip side of that is that they are now legally responsible for any information in those packets, e.g. plans for a bank robbery.
The current rules that they like a lot, and have paid good money to have, give them all the privileges of being "common carriers" similar to old-school phone services, while also giving them none of the restrictions that used to come along with that. And while you might be able to make up some principles to justify that, what's of course justifying it is the money flowing into their coffers as a result, some of which has flowed into the coffers of most of Congress and probably both major party candidates for president and members of the FCC board.
Vote for Pedro
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2024, @04:54AM (4 children)
Sounds like a plan. Obviously investing in litigation is much more profitable than investing in infrastructure.
This is the world we vote for, and will vote for again in a few months, so please let's not blame the "cable lobby" when we hand it all to them on a silver platter
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2024, @05:32AM (3 children)
Sorry to be cynical, but as I've said before, I don't think it matters who we vote for: the corporations have the power.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday April 05 2024, @11:04AM (1 child)
It matters because you can shift which corporations hold power, e.g. Republicans tend to get more from BP and Shell, Democrats tend to get more from Google and Goldman Sachs.
It also matters because it's one of the easiest ways to exercise any political power at all. Depending on where you live, it can take as little as 20 minutes to vote, which seems like at least as good a use of your time as, say, going to get a McRib.
Vote for Pedro
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2024, @07:22PM
Yeah! And who says you have to vote for either a democrat or republican? or reelect them for 40 years? Make enough noise and you can put anyone you want on the ballot. Get more than 50% and you win!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2024, @07:31PM
Because the voters give it to them by reelecting their puppets. We can be more active in the primaries (better still might be instant runoffs) and knock them off the ballot. We are directly responsible for how we choose. There is nothing forcing us to believe corporate bullshit.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Opportunist on Friday April 05 2024, @06:27AM (3 children)
The government?
Look, I usually sell good advice, this one is free: Carpet-bombing someone with frivolous lawsuits in the hope that they run out of money before you do only works against someone who doesn't have infinite money.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Friday April 05 2024, @06:40AM (1 child)
They don't need to sue forever, just until the Republicans are back in the White House, at which time they will replace the current FCC commissioners just like they did in 2017 after the Democrats put Net Neutrality (NN) in place in 2015 and reverse NN...again.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 06 2024, @11:57PM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2024, @07:39PM
Who does have more money? I mean, the fed is printing more money for corporations than they are for the government with all this "quantitative easing" bullshit. They don't even bother counting it anymore, wanna make us forget how much free money Wall Street is getting. And we get devalued currency and inflation
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Friday April 05 2024, @02:11PM (2 children)
That doesn't sound neutral. That sounds extremely suspicious, like three letter agencies preventing misinformation level of suspicious.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2024, @04:09PM
What, specifically, "doesn't sound neutral"?
Lawsuits? no throttling/blocking? That there are any rules of any kind? That such rules were implemented then rolled back? Something else?
Do tell. And stop being vague. I'm getting a strong, rolled up newspaper, "bad Gub'mint! Gub'mint bad!" anarcho-capitalist vibe. Or am I missing something?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2024, @08:09PM
It's not. Only a dumb pipe can be neutral. Security, or any other filtering is an extra cost option the user can purchase from their service provider. I mean, that's the way it works in Freedonia
(Score: 2) by dwilson98052 on Friday April 05 2024, @05:00PM (2 children)
We were paying around $250/mo for a package that included a couple of pay channels and the fastest internet connection they offered which only had 50Mb upload speeds.
We canceled our cable and switched to a local ISP and now have a 1Gbit fiber connection and stream everything we want to watch for about half what we were paying before.
Cheaper, faster, and we can still watch all of our shows... and we generally have fewer ads to watch.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2024, @07:44PM (1 child)
Whose backbone are they using? Cable/telco owns it all. Three guesses why...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2024, @05:20AM
Don't be so very sure of that. Electric companies are getting into this act. My fiber was installed by the electric cooperative, of which I am a member and shareholder. Meaning, I actually own a sliver of that backbone, however small it might be. Electric companies around the nation have wanted to install internet for a couple of decades, but it never seemed to take off, until recently. The telcos pissed congress off in recent years, as well as state governments. They still have a tight grip on the industry, but it is beginning to slip. If you ever see a ballot proposition that will enable non-telco and non-cable infrastructure to be built, you need to vote for it.
All that non-coverage that we have discussed repeatedly on SN has finally bitten the telcos in the ass.