The FCC's dilema

[TheBigA]

Interesting article in USA Today. Clearly, the FCC was asleep for the last 8-10 years. They gave all their attention to indecency while the internet exploded. Now, the new regime is stuck trying to make up for lost time. Meanwhile, the telecom industry invested hundreds of billions of dollars, the public has made up its own rules, and both will probably freak when Big Brother steps in.


http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2010-04-13-broadband13_ST_N.htm

 

[TomT]

The essence of Comcast decision is that the FCC needs specific Congressional authority to regulate broadband as a common carrier. The Commission relied upon general statement of purpose in the Communications act to attempt regulation of cable broadband, the Court of Appeals disagreed.

However, look for more suits, as the Commission's reaction to this decision seems to be defiance.

 

[TheBigA]

I think you're exactly right. This is not an FCC that will take "no" for an answer. They'd take the easy way if it was available. But since it's not, they'll go after Congressional authority. And they might get it. This is not an administration that believe in laissez faire and anarchy. From their POV, the internet must be regulated, and they're the folks who should do it.

 

[landtuna]

I have often wondered (as a former IT professional) why "common sense" regulation was not applied to the Internet as it is applied to broadcast radio and TV or even telephone. I see no reason why spammers, scammers and porno should be available to anyone with the price of an ISP subscription. Especially when it is virtually impossible to restrict access to adults.

 

[TheBigA]

Because the internet is supposed to be free and unregulated media. That's the charm of it. The minute you get regulators involved, they'll restrict language, tell people what to do, force them to hire a lot of expensive lawyers, and the whole thing will be exactly like broadcasting. And no one wants that to happen.

 

[w9wi]

Because the internet is supposed to be free and unregulated media. That's the charm of it. The minute you get regulators involved, they'll restrict language, tell people what to do, force them to hire a lot of expensive lawyers, and the whole thing will be exactly like broadcasting. And no one wants that to happen.

To some degree (and I want to emphasize, **to some degree**), is it possible the ISPs have brought this upon themselves, by fighting net neutrality?

Compare & contrast your telephone service to your internet service.

Your telephone company is a common carrier. As long as you pay your bill, and don't attach any equipment that will damage their equipment or disrupt other people's service, the telephone company doesn't know or care what you're saying. They aren't *allowed* to know.

In return, they have no responsibility for what you say over your phone. If you use your phone to arrange a terrorist attack, or to run a Ponzi scheme, or whatever... You're responsible. Your telephone company isn't.

If ISPs agreed to pass any offered traffic, as long as it's consistent with the technical constraints of the service, there would be much less basis for regulation. They could address the technical issues (Bit-Torrent users taking too much of shared bandwidth) by adjusting their tariffs - for example, by capping monthly total transfer.

I wonder if the ISPs will regret their fight down the road? By showing that they're willing & able to target specific protocols and sites, do they develop an *obligation* to find & block dangerous sites? An ISP that blocks (hypothetical) "movie-torrent-index.com", will they be liable if they don't find - and block - "violent-jihad.net"?

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

In a growing, bustling, free-enterprise society that has set the worldwide standards of economic development, we have always been accustomed to rate schedules that discount for volume.

ship more oil on the developing railroads and we will give you a better rate.

Fly more miles on our airline and we have this miles scheme to make it worth your while.

Today a growing world population (maybe not currently growing?) and with more and more of that population wanting all the good things other people have: energy, water, communications, food.... we are actually reaching a time when rate schedules are being turned up-side-down. My water company raises my rate on excess amounts used. Energy prices are going that direction.

So, yes, if ISPs would scale rates UP for volume, spamming and some other Internet problems might be limited or even go away without Washington regulators. Let the market pricing put on the brakes.

The other side of this tapestry is this: Big capital is NOT interested in developing new technologies if they cannot grow their market and push aside their competitors through aggressive moves... include volume discounts.

As the guy says on the bench out in front of my Mayberry looking courthouse: "It ain't no easy problem to solve."

 

[TexasTom]

I'll just note that the US isn't doing very well with a deregulated environment for Internet service -- we have slower service at a higher cost when compared to other developed countries that mostly do regulate their ISPs more than we do.

A friend who lives in Italy has a greater choice of ISPs in Rome than I have in Dallas -- and is able to get faster service at a lower cost than anything available in this country. It's pretty pathetic when the US is falling behind Italy on broadband Internet service...really pathetic.

Regulating ISPs more like common carriers is not remotely the same as letting the government regulate content -- ISP regulation done properly will give us more choice, lower costs, and fewer worries about corporate interference in what we can access online versus the status quo. And to suggest that we can have effective competition in a deregulated market when most households only have a choice of two broadband ISPs is something of a joke...it just isn't going to happen.

 

[TheBigA]

By showing that they're willing & able to target specific protocols and sites, do they develop an *obligation* to find & block dangerous sites? An ISP that blocks (hypothetical) "movie-torrent-index.com", will they be liable if they don't find - and block - "violent-jihad.net"?

That's why this is so confusing. If they do that, they're not acting as a common carrier. Copyright owners want them to collect money for the downloading of certain content. That changes their role again. So everyone wants these ISPs to do different things, do it for free, and let a certain amount of anarchy reign. That simply can't be done.

At the same time, POTS service is in decline. Some major telecom companies want to get out and sell to smaller companies because there's not enough money in it. So what's the upside to be an old style common carrier?

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Implementing discipline and control of spamming and other rude behavior has it's own problems. I am a BellSouth customer, now rolled into the "new" AT&T. Before the merger, a list-serve of broadcasters that I participate in has fallen into the "black book" syndrome more than once. Our list serve uses a very profession ISP that does not sell retail access. It is a service bureau hosting servers for good corporate customers. The owner has some broadcast technical background, participates in the discussion, and proved hosting service to us he would not seek out from other customers.

Every once in awhile some of us would suddenly fail to get any traffic from the list-serve. When we began checking we would find that no one with BellSouth service was getting the messages. Go through the grief of the calling-que to get to the help desk and after a day of research they would get back and explain that our ISP had been naughty and was the source of SPAM and was on the black list. Then they would spell out the steps WE would have to take to get it fixed. What we found out after three weeks one time was that in entering the list of banned ISPs, someone fat-fingered the data and put us in there by mistake. Then they began explaining to us all the things WE would have to do in order to fix THEIR problem.

I finally got the phone number of the right guy and we got a knot yanked in the tail of the network managers.

LONG STORY to indicate that all of these schemes we are talking about to cure abusive Internet traffic assume that the people who run the Internet backbone and access points have logical, efficient systems to manage the mechanisms to put the hurt of bit-torrent sites, etc. Don't count on it!

 

[TheBigA]

Here is the latest on the FCC's dilema from the Washington Post. It seems to be uncharacteristically status quo:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2010/05/fcc_chair_prefers_to_keep_broa.html?hpid=topnews

 

[nmoore6676]

If my memory serves the first dust ups on so called net neutrality came as a result of ISPs wishing to regulate certain specific traffic to wit the cable internet providers did not want you to be streaming live video or movies which detracted from the pay per view and premium services. On the other end AT&T and Verizon along with other Telcos did not want you using VOIP to get around their long distance and toll calling service fees. They used the excuse of those "high volume" users were taking away bandwidth from the little old ladies downloading photos of the grandkids. Then the movie studios and recording companies got their panties in a bunch over file sharing sites.

The bottom line is that no one should be sharing music and other copy-written content illegally but how do you stop it is a difficult question. You can go after their servers but they can move them off shore. You can go after the end users but they are everywhere. As i see it the real issue driving this is to control illegal sharing and also to stop or at least drastically curtail competitive uses that compete with the core business of those who own the conduits.

I guess having some kind of a meter to make the users who use the most bandwidth pay more but then where does it cut in and what kinds of rates are we talking. I am a user of streaming radio to get programming not available locally. I occasionally use services like HULU to catch missed episodes of my favorite TV shows. So I could very well be caught in the group to be charged more so while I might not mind the guy down the street gaming online and/or downloading illicit material to pay more I don't want to pay more myself.

When you get into allowing the government to regulate content then there is another can of worms being opened. None of us want phishers, spammers, or kiddie porn purveyors but how do you stop them, again they can just move off shore and then it is out of the hands of the FCC or the PUCO. So you end up arresting the parents who send out cute photos of their new baby on the bear skin rug or in the bath and the real bad guys will be on an island somewhere laughing at us. Maybe there is a way to police it but it has to be very carefully crafted and implemented. The threat of censorship to limit free speech is not that hard to imagine given the general discontent with and distrust of government of all stripes today.

Truth is that for every technology to thwart the bad guys they will continually innovate a path around whatever fences we build. Most of the copy protection schemes only annoy legitimate users trying to do what they want with what they have paid for while the people making illegal copies to sell in mass numbers go happily on their way.

 

[FreddyE1977]

I think you're exactly right. This is not an FCC that will take "no" for an answer. They'd take the easy way if it was available. But since it's not, they'll go after Congressional authority. And they might get it.

But by all appearances, they will be dealing with a very different Congress come next January.
It may be a rather short-lived victory.

 

[TexasTom]

When you get into allowing the government to regulate content then there is another can of worms being opened.

Net neutrality isn't government regulation of content -- what it is (or would be) is the Internet's equivalent of the regulations that have existed for years for telephone service that prohibit telephone companies from discriminating based on the content of the telephone calls that go through their service. Frankly, it's something that we should have done years ago...