U.S. appeals court kills net neutrality

[kentonio]

It comes down to the fact that I trust competitive businesses more than the government, and I am troubled by the thought of government regulating the internet in any way when the lack of such regulation is the reason for much of its success.

Why the hell is 'You have to treat all legal traffic equally' a bad regulation? You must really hate the constitution then for putting all those terrible regulations on the country instead of letting competitive business decide everything.

[Ben Kenobi]

Government regulating the internet is a bad bad idea. I'd much rather take my chances with a company I can choose not to purchase from (and yes, ISPs are increasingly competitive--telecom is not the way it was 20 years ago).

Not here. There's two major suppliers of internet services, and many places have contracts negotiated guaranteeing a sole supplier. Given this, government regulation concerning ISPs is appropriate. People are not free to simply 'switch to another provider', just as they are not free to get their water from someone else or their electricity.

Is the court going to strike down monopoly agreements, so that there is actual competition in the market?

I'd also like to see percentages of internet traffic by ISP. Is it not 50 percent or something from just 2 providers?

The five largest business ISPs drove nearly 50 percent of business Internet traffic across the U.S.

http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2011/11/AT_T_Drives_Most_Internet_Traffic_for_U.S._Businesses_in_September_2011

90 percent in just 10 providers back in 2011, and I'd expect to see more consolidation since then.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

It actually kills FCC overreach. If the FCC wanted to have net neutrality it could reclassify ISPs as "common carriers".

My hope* is that this is what will happen. Really how it should have been all along.

*this hope may not be realistic.

[MrFun]

It comes down to the fact that I trust competitive businesses more than the government, and I am troubled by the thought of government regulating the internet in any way when the lack of such regulation is the reason for much of its success.

So you're in favor of businesses suppressing freedom of speech, and diminishing choices for consumers.

[Ban Kenobi]

It comes down to the fact that I trust competitive businesses more than the government, and I am troubled by the thought of government regulating the internet in any way when the lack of such regulation is the reason for much of its success.

Is this purely ideological or is there anything about Net Neutrality in particular that you find objectionable?

[MrFun]

Is this purely ideological or is there anything about Net Neutrality in particular that you find objectionable?

Well, I think whenever HC hears the word "government," he goes into epileptic seizures, starts foaming at the mouth, and then starts ranting incoherently about something like government being evil.

That's probably why he prefers corporate abuse of power rather than responsible government oversight, such as here with the issue of net neutrality.

[Dr Strangelove]

So one ISP signs a deal to give fast connection to several hugely popular sites and slow down their rivals significantly. Another ISP signs a deal to do a few others at expense of the rest. Etc etc. Great deal for you there, you've just gotten a significantly ****ter internet experience, but at least the pesky guvmint isn't regulating the internet eh?

That might be covered under anti-trust laws. IIRC that's how the US government broke up Standard Oil.

[pchang]

The real situation is that Netflix traffic eats up >50% of an ISP's bandwidth for several hours a day. The ISP would like to throttle this to reduce the need to spend on infrastructure. This will help keep prices low for the consumer. The ISP would like to charge Netflix for this traffic to pay for the infrastructure build out. Consumers will pay one way or the other. The ISP just wants the cost associated with Netflix instead of the ISP.

[notyoueither]

Don't ISPs in the US have caps?

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Some. It's increasingly heading that direction. They're only really common on mobile.

[notyoueither]

Well, if you want to stream Netflix day and night shouldn't you have to pay for the delivery instead of eating the free lunch paid for by your neighbours?

[Dinner]

The real situation is that Netflix traffic eats up >50% of an ISP's bandwidth for several hours a day. The ISP would like to throttle this to reduce the need to spend on infrastructure. This will help keep prices low for the consumer. The ISP would like to charge Netflix for this traffic to pay for the infrastructure build out. Consumers will pay one way or the other. The ISP just wants the cost associated with Netflix instead of the ISP.

Not to mention Comcast and Time-Warner would LOVE for Netflix and Hulu to be dead so that people have to go back to paying them $120 a month for really ****ty service. Instead of simply paying $8.95 per month for Netflix and $29.95 for cable internet.

[notyoueither]

Are there many indy ISPs in the US? We have many in Canada. The major pipe owners are forced to lease access to them from what I understand.

[pchang]

There are a few. They have very little market share though.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The real situation is that Netflix traffic eats up >50% of an ISP's bandwidth for several hours a day. The ISP would like to throttle this to reduce the need to spend on infrastructure. This will help keep prices low for the consumer. The ISP would like to charge Netflix for this traffic to pay for the infrastructure build out. Consumers will pay one way or the other. The ISP just wants the cost associated with Netflix instead of the ISP.

Well, if you want to stream Netflix day and night shouldn't you have to pay for the delivery instead of eating the free lunch paid for by your neighbours?

And that is the main issue that keeps me on the fence about net neutrality. On first brush, it seems like a really great idea - why should those ISPs be allowed to discriminate and destroy companies that they are competing with? On the other hand, streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, etc, don't really have to pay the true cost of the bandwidth they use. They get to pay equal amounts as what a website with all text on it pays and the ISP is left footing the bill.

It tends to make the ISPs into de facto utilities and perhaps that's the goal, but that doesn't mean the price is going to go down anytime soon (or service go up) if that's the direction we want to go. In the end, we have to make a decision what we'd rather want.

And of course, if net neutrality is upheld, I have a feeling data caps will finally come to ISPs.