FCC loses big in court's Comcast ruling over Net Neutrality

(IMAGE: Drudge, ever the drama queen, leads with this story as I publish this post.)

A US federal appeals court has ruled that the FCC doesn't have the authority to force broadband providers to treat all internet traffic equally, and that blocking or slowing certain services—say, BitTorrrent—for anti-competitive reasons is okay. The ruling basically tells the FCC that it has no authority to regulate the activities of internet service providers, just as the agency prepares to launch a nationwide broadband agenda.

After Comcast's blocking [of BitTorrent] was exposed, the F.C.C. told Comcast to stop discriminating against BitTorrent traffic and in 2008 issued broader rules for the industry regarding "net neutrality," the principle that all Internet content should be treated equally by network providers. Comcast challenged the F.C.C.'s authority to issue such rules and argued that its throttling of BitTorrent was necessary to ensure that a few customers did not unfairly hog the capacity of the network, slowing down Internet access for all of its customers.
But Tuesday's court ruling has far larger implications than just the Comcast case. The ruling would allow Comcast and other Internet service providers to restrict consumers' ability to access certain kinds of Internet content, such as video sites like Hulu.com or Google's YouTube service, or charge certain heavy users of their networks more money for access. Google, Microsoft and other big producers of Web content have argued that such controls or pricing policies would thwart innovation and customer choice.

News coverage today: New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Torrentfreak, Cnet, Wired News. What does this mean to you? From Ryan Singel's Wired News piece:

A broadband company could, for instance, ink a deal with Microsoft to transfer all attempts to reach Google.com to Bing.com. The only recourse a user would have, under the ruling, would be to switch to a different provider -- assuming, of course, they had an alternative to switch to.
Companies can also now prohibit you from using a wireless router you bought at the store, forcing you to use one they rent out -- just as they do with cable boxes. They could also decide to charge you a fee every time you upgrade your computer, or even block you from using certain models, just as the nation's mobile phone carriers do today.

Some argue the ruling is a good thing: Kevin Werbach tweeted, "My quick read of the Comcast opinion: it's as positive for the FCC as a reversal could be. Leaves lots of room to maneuver." Dan Gillmor argues that the responsibility for ISP oversight has always been the job of Congress, anyway. See also this piece at Techdirt.

Here's a link to the FCC ruling (PDF).

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

More at Boing Boing

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The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Terry

To tell the truth, I think this ruling should probably fall into net neutrality’s ‘win’ column. The ruling was that the FCC doesn’t have authority over Comcast’s network management practices. That is all.

Now, considering the fact that the FCC was claiming said authority based solely on a vaguely-worded section of a 1934 law that knew nothing of net neutrality and very little about the shape of communication to come, and that probably only marginally cared about freedom of expression, I for one have no trouble viewing this one as a victory. I’m just not big on the idea of granting the FCC regulatory powers over ISPs because of a law that cannot account for the intricacies of the thing to be regulated. It just sounds to me like power crying out to be abused.

What I don’t understand is why so many seem to think that this ruling means that ISPs will now be completely unregulated for all time. This doesn’t sound like the MO of the United States I live in. I think it’s far more likely that the scumbags that run the show will now turn their one-eyed gaze upon drafting new legislation for just this purpose.

And this would not necessarily be a bad thing. It’s possible – if enough of us demand it long enough and loud enough – that new ISP-regulating legislation could be drafted with net neutrality in mind.

I know I’m dreaming here, but it’s not a completely hopeless dream.
urbanspaceman

I wonder how big a hornets’ nest ISP’s would find themselves in if they went full-speed ahead with their presumed plans to become net tyrants. While I have no patience with the ludicrous “the-free-market-will-take-care-of-everything” argument, I suspect that the reason the other shoe hasn’t dropped quite yet is because the ISP’s (with the possible exception of the really egregious ones whose names I need not mention) are wary of pissing too many customers off too soon and thereby ruining their case for leniency from federal regulators.

Having said all of that, if I can’t use my broadband connection for whatever I choose, within reason, I’ll cancel my service. Why pay good money for crippled and censored net access? I’d go back to dialup but I’ve long since dropped ground-line phone service. So instead, I’ll just drag my little laptop to a coffee shop every evening to check my e-mail, then go home. It’ll be sort of like it’s 1995 all over again. :~(
johnofjack

Why on earth wouldn’t the FCC be able to regulate broadband? What is ever done with the internet that doesn’t involve interstate telecommunications?

email to Flickr,
Youtube to watch clips,
Flickr to upload photos,
Google Maps to find a local restaurant,
amazon.com to buy a DVD,
WoW to quest,
and even to SFTP a PHP file to a host: still done to receive information, process it, and communicate a result back to the user.

I can’t think of a single thing the internet is ever used for that doesn’t involve communication. And almost all of it, simply by virtue of the way the internet works (routing things along whichever path is most responsive), involves communication from one state (or even country) to another.
Anonymous

aw fuck.
scifijazznik

I recommend turpentine to wash the Drudge off your computer. It won’t get it all off, but it will cover up the smell somewhat.
Ocker3

Considering the current state of the USG, I don’t want to think too long about how hard it would be to get legislation crafted to give the FCC control over ISPs and their throttling of data. Much easier (and quicker) if the FCC simply extended existing powers. Giving one Government agency Slightly more power doesn’t lead to 1984, giving them Total power does.

And as long as the additional power makes sense, and it’s handled appropriately, I’d say it’s a good thing. Of course we’d need to keep an eye on how and when that power is used, and for that we have the 5th column. Trust, but verify.
Kratos86

Oh crap this is terrible news with that amount of control over what is throttled and blocked the ISP’s can basically be paid off by competitors and be covered under this law as doing nothing wrong.

There isn’t anything stopping them from blocking access to any website they want and forcing you to use one service over another. The criminals at the RIAA and MPAA are going to have a field day.

Gotta love our free society unlike those countries that have internet censorship.. lol.
Anonymous

“BitTorrent, which is used to exchange large video files, most often pirated copies of movies.”

This is hardly a fair description of the BitTorrent protocol… That’s like saying that trains are a transportation system for chemicals, most often illegal drugs. It’s hardly the purpose or even most common use of the protocol.
Phlip

The Drudge picture refers to Julius Caesar. Drudge is openly (and seditiously) calling for Obama’s assassination; this is a common theme among far-right nutjob websites.

One of them, for example, is called “Lean and hungry look”, which is a Shakespearean reference to Cassius, the mytho-historical leader of the assassins.

And u thought those guys weren’t educated! Their demagogues certainly are…
- Anonymous
  
  To say that Drudge calls for the assassination of Obama is absolutely ludicrous. I mean, 99 percent of the site’s content (what, one page in total?) is quoted headlines from OTHER sites.
  - Phlip
    
    (Stu I didn’t say traffic bounce)
    
    Drudge is responsible for the content on his site. Every teabagger and gun nut knows what the “Julius” code word for Obama means: Julius Caesar, assassinated in the name of “freedom”, or restoring the (patrician) democracy of Rome.
    
    Don’t excuse these crackpots.
    - Stu Mark
      
      Sorry, that was my assumption. What kind of bounce are you discussing?
      - Phlip
        
        http://www.theonion.com/articles/apple-unveils-new-productunveiling-product,2162/
        
        ‘The iLaunch, as the new product is called, was then raised up from below the stage, prompting the audience of technology journalists, developers, and self-professed “Apple fanatics” to burst into a five-minute standing ovation.’
        
        Primarily emotional, it seems! I honestly forgot “bounce” was a website term. (And now, if y’all will excuse me, I need to get back to my high-end website programming job…)
- Teller
  
  Maybe I’m missing your dark & funny sarcasm about Julius = Obama. From the Drudge-linked article on Cnet:
  
  “Tuesday’s decision could doom one of the signature initiatives of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski…”
  - Phlip
    
    then why the f— is there a picture of Julius Caesar? or am I tripping again? (Don’t answer that plz!)
    - Phlip
      
      http://www.ghanaschoolsonline.com/details.cfm?tblNewsCatID=17&tblNewsID=229
      
      Ta-da: “Picture: Caesar Addressing his Troops.”
      
      note JC is dressed like a general, but wearing the wreath. He’s addressing his troops, with Rome behind the hills. That means he’s thanking them for winning the civil war, and promising them RnR in Rome.
      
      Drudge cropped the wreath off, to be just a little bit more sly. He picked a picture showing Caesar just before he held his victory march in Rome, leading to his assassination.
      - Phlip
        
        I forgot to mention the wreath is, of course, the symbol for an Emperor, and JC got assassinated for wearing it around town after his victory…
LYNDON

I’d have said using Julius Ceasar /the play/ as encouragement for assassination was not very well thought through.

Oh, the irony, it is not merely literary.
- Phlip
  
  Actual LOL – but that’s indeed where “Lean and Hungry Look” and similar code-words come from.
  
  Yes, folks, going from a civil war, to an assassination, to two successive civil wars is NOT really the best strategy to prevent totalitarianism. It did, in fact, cement the Julio-Claudians’ hold on the monarchy, and lead almost instantly to some of the worst emperors in all of history…
  
  Another of Shakespeare’s details is the wayward “mob mentality” in Rome. Fly your flag, Drudge, that’s all you are good for!
fistula spume

I’m confused. So there is no governing body or regulations for ISP’s? There are seperate regulations for phone or cable companies as it applies to those products but when it comes to internet the ISP’s don’t have any regulation? This would almost sound like a free market enterprise if there weren’t two kinds of companies controlling the last mile. How does the FCC’s National Broadband plan work if they have no jurisdiction? It seems the ISP’s were all a flutter over that plan but if they don’t have to listen to the FCC then I guess it’s business as usual. What does it all mean?!
Anonymous

I guess nobody on the Federal Appeals Court uses the internet. Welcome to ISP dictatorship.
Anonymous

First of all, this is good news in my opinion. Government is growing, but that oversteps the bounds.

Second of all, for all of those that complain about Drudge’s manner of cherry-picking news articles and dramatic, screaming headlines, you should think twice before using the Huffington Post or the Daily Beast by the same logic.
Phlip

Oooh, I get it. BB is comparing internet free speech with sedition carried by said free speech. Well played! C-:
Anonymous

I think a lot of you are missing the point. The court isn’t ruling on if net neutrality is a good thing or not. It was ruling on if the FCC has legal authority to regulate this. Because the United States is not a dictatorship, regulatory agencies don’t have the right to go regulate anything they feel like. They can only regulate on matters for which they’ve been explicitly granted legal jurisdiction by Congress. And the court’s ruling is that Congress never gave them this power. It’s up to Congress to decide how to deal with this issue.
delt664

/facepalm

Free and equal access to information (the internet) needs to be recognized as a universal human right.

Content blocking / redirecting needs to be recognized as anti-competitive under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
- kc0bbq
  
  “Free and equal access to information (the internet) needs to be recognized as a universal human right.”
  
  Rights don’t work like that. Use of the internet is a benefit. It can’t exist in a vacuum, and you don’t have the right to another’s labor (the infrastructure, etc.) when they don’t want to give it to you. If rights matter for anything, anyway. Obviously, we limit rights, for good or for bad, sometimes, for public good. But even if the government provided internet for everyone it’s still not even up to being a public good, it’s a public benefit.
  
  This is a good ruling, because the last thing this country needs is the FCC going all extra-Constitutional on us. They need to follow the law. The FCC isn’t exactly trustworthy. No government entity should be treated like it is. It’s a good ruling in the way that even someone who’s obviously guilty still has a trial and a defense attorney. You don’t give the government that kind of leeway without making damn sure they are doing it according to the law of the land.
  - delt664
    
    Access to information is as vital to democracy as access to water and electricity are vital to basic survival.
    
    We have reached a point where the largest point of access to the free exchange of information and ideas in the world is the Internet. Additionally, a significant portion of the national and global economy is dependent upon open and free internet.
    
    When I say Free Internet, I do not mean for no compensation as you seem to imply, but rather in the sense that data is not discriminated against.
    
    Just as you compensate your local utility company for access to water / electricity / etc, and they cannot regulate what you do with it, you pay for access to your ISP, and they should not regulate what kind of packets you get access to.
    
    Imagine that your friendly local electricity company also produced a wide array of electronics. Should they be allowed to block you from being able to use electricity for electronics made by other manufacturers? Or perhaps charge you additional fees to be able to use these competing devices? Doing this is possibly illegal (Sherman Antitrust Act, wiki it.) and unethical when there are few to no alternatives.
    
    In truth, the FCC was attempting to regulate ISP’s in order to prevent them from regulating consumers. This is Anti-Regulation regulation. Democracy is dependent on the free exchange of ideas, and the free market is based on competition. Allowing ISP’s free reign to content filter / block is bad for both.
kmoser

Here’s a class action lawsuit against Comcast: http://www.p2pcongestionsettlement.com/
Gilgongo

This announcement is somewhat timely.

Here in chilly (now post) Bank Holiday London, we went round to our neighbour’s house for tea and met their lanky teenage son. I can’t recall how we got into the conversation, but he mentioned how he and his friends were buying mesh routers to share their iTunes collections (“… and other stuff”) around. I said I was impressed by the geekery. He smiled and said “Well, there’s this big clamp-down on the Internet now, so most people I know are now transferring stuff on memory sticks or setting up mesh networks. I suppose we all have to be geeks now.”

In mixed company, I didn’t want to ask too many questions about how far into this he was (Are they encrypting stuff? How big is the network? How do I join?) – mainly because I’m about 20 years older than him and his parents don’t have a clue. Damn interesting development though if it’s in any way a real trend.
swadeshine

I applaud this decision. It’s a win for the little guy. I’m not sure many realize what “net neutrality” regulation actually is -> http://bit.ly/rmHvm
- Avram / Moderator
  
  Swadeshine, that article you linked to by Adam de Angeli is ridiculous and dishonest. Shall I count the ways?
  
  1. In order to claim that the current, non-neutral, state of affairs is harmless, de Angeli claims that neutrality advocates are only concerned with ISPs blocking websites, and then asserts that no such thing has ever happened. In actuality, another thing that neutrality advocates fear is that ISPs will block or throttle certain services, and the federal appeals court case Xeni is talking about is a ruling in just such a case: Comcast blocked its users from using BitTorrent. De Angeli refers to this later on, but casts it as a piracy issue.
  
  2. De Angeli then goes on to claim that the FCC will require licensing to set up servers, a notion he seems to have pulled out of thin air. The fact that he refers to the FCC as a “fascist bureau” should tell you that not all of his wheels are touching the ground.
  - Terry
    
    You mean I can’t believe everything I read on the internet? This is shocking! Why doesn’t the FCC or Google or Steve Jobs DO something about this?!?!
jujubeans

Vry nlkly ths cmmnt wll rmn, bt hw s ths dffrnt frm Bngbng cnsrng nd rmvng cmmnts tht sggstd tht Xn’s nthsstc Pd nfmrcls wr pd fr?
- Day Vexx
  
  I wouldn’t accuse Xeni (or any of the BB folks) of pimping products for payola, etc… but I know that I’ve come down on the wrong side of their moderation more than a few times, and I’ve generally felt the moderators were rude in doing so. Yeah, it’s their house, and I’m a guest. I get that.
  
  But…
  
  I also feel like guests should be allowed their opinion, so long as they’re not busting chairs or hollering weird accusations. I made a jokey comment about not wanting to attend Erykah Badu’s concert the other day– not that I have a choice, considering I’m 2000 miles away– and it was killed off right away. That hurts, Xeni. Why disappear my comment? Can’t a guest say “I don’t really dig this music,” and still be okay with hanging around?
  
  It’s not like I’m out hating on every entry. Take a look at my comments: I shared a story about Dee Snider, got a little geeky on music terminology, expressed some helpless anger about the war video, got seriously geeky discussing seismic charge noises, upheld some moms’ rights, congratulated Rob on an April Fools’ joke, and asked Cusak to help me kill the 80′s once and for all.
  
  So I’m hardly a troll.
  
  So what DOES that make me? The way I see it, I’m a guest who gets to come over and hang out, but gets hauled out the door if I disagree. For the most part, you all are some cool folks– but you have more to learn about being good hosts.
  - Phlip
    
    > I also feel like guests should be allowed their opinion, so
    > long as they’re not busting chairs or hollering weird accusations
    
    or praising with faint damnation…
    - Day Vexx
      
      I hope that writing an honest comment about my own feelings doesn’t get me tossed out just yet, Phil.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    The way I see it, I’m a guest who gets to come over and hang out, but gets hauled out the door if I disagree.
    
    Try to think of yourself as a guest who gets to come over and hang out and decides to put Celine Dion on the stereo. Not necessarily evil, but it can kill everyone else’s enjoyment of the party.
    - Day Vexx
      
      #1– That is cold.
      
      #2– I think I see the problem. I see BB as a fascinating discussion, a casual roundabout of interesting ideas, a place where opinions and brainstorms get tossed out on the table and examined by a group of unique people– but I guess you just see it as a party. I keep trying to find a way into this place, but it doesn’t seem to be working out.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        I keep trying to find a way into this place, but it doesn’t seem to be working out.
        
        You have 238 published comments in your history.
- Phlip
  
  The difference is “Speech is free, but BoingBoing is moderated”. That means “free speech” means “BoingBoing is free to remove text, at their pleasure”. We are guests in their house.
- David Pescovitz
  
  @jujubeans, You’re being ridiculous. We clearly have said, many times, that we are entirely transparent when a sponsor is involved. It’s written in our ad policy too. Why should you expect us to read, or respond to, the same accusation over and over? No matter how many times we say that we don’t do pay-for-post, you won’t believe it.
- Stu Mark
  
  My sense of BoingBoing and censorship is this: They let you say what you want, as long as you are respectful. I would bet that they would allow me to suggest that I suspect Xeni was given payola to say many nice things about the iPad, just like disk jockeys got paid to play certain records. As long as I said it respectfully, my money says that they’d let the comment stand.
  
  Now, let me be clear, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that Xeni would ever take a dime in payola, no matter the circumstance. It just doesn’t seem like her. I’ve been following her pundit-career for almost a decade now (since I guess 2002 or so, whenever she first started writing op-eds for the Times or NPR, I forget where I first chanced upon her). She’s always come across, to me, as someone who speaks her mind and does so with integrity. Further, has there been any reports of Xeni taking someone to task if all they’d done was respectfully disagree with her or politely suggest she lacks a certain philosophical/moral quality?
  
  Whenever I hear anyone talk about BoingBoing censoring commenters, I feel as though it always comes down to someone taking a shit on the braided rug in their foyer. If the editorial staff of BoingBoing has been any harsher with said shit than throwing it in the garbage can, I’d like to hear about it.
  
  And to be clear, I’m a 43 year-old male, married, with kids. I’m a geek and a writer and a parenting advocate/pundit and a composer and other relatively bland things. I have no agenda, I have no connection to BoingBoing, I’m just a guy standing here, enjoying the discussion.
- Xeni Jardin
  
  Jujubeans, seriously, go eat a bag of dick.
  
  We’ve stated many times here on Boing Boing that our editorial can’t be bought. I received no compensation, in cash or in goods or otherwise, from Apple. They loaned me an iPad, temporary access to their product, as they did a number of other reviewers prior to sale date. This is not unusual. Other technology manufacturers also provide Boing Boing editors, and other tech reviewers, with review units for the purpose of writing reviews. I don’t keep the products. I don’t get paid by Apple. I don’t promise favorable coverage.
  
  The opinions I write about their products, and on applications that run on their products, are my own.
  - Terry
    
    “go eat a bag of dick”
    
    This is – seriously – one of the most well-crafted kiss-offs I have ever seen. I would adopt it myself, but I fear that if my wife got a hold of it I would hear a thousand times a day.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Two down.
Stephen

If FCC mandating Net Neutrality is as bad as Comcast violating it, what is the purpose of the lobbying? Will it become OK for FCC to mandate Net Neutrality if the Congress passes a law explicitly granting them that power? Or is EFF objecting to all government regulation? Is EFF, in fact, lobbying AGAINST Net Neutrality because it is a regulation?
Bodhipaksa

The question now is whether Congress will have the balls to stand up to the telecom companies and craft a law making giving the FCC the authority to enforce net neutrality.
Anonymous

Somewhat related: Britain’s Digital Economy Bill was read, but the toxic Internet piracy stuff was left in:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/news/a212974/government-drops-key-digital-bill-clauses.html

This is very, very bad.
Anonymous

Drudge isn’t being a drama queen in this instance: With no way of preventing ISP throttling, the fact ISPs currently destroy competetion through lawsuits and that many people do not have choices when it comes to thier provide this can set everyone up for a very bad situation.

If someone over at your local ISP doesn’t like BoingBoing you could suddenly find yourself cruising at 1/kbs when you try to load this site.
glory bee

As it is for me I have to Google Boing Boing after I’ve only received an email list of topics? So therefore I’m going through Google anyhow. I’d prefer to be able to access Boing boing without this going through a web search and being asked to give my password etc, when surely (?) Boing Boing know it is me.
Anonymous

“Jujubeans, seriously, go eat a bag of dick.”

Extreme lulz were had.

I actually think this ruling is a good thing. The FCC has been out of control for years. The fact that I’m a huge pirate doesn’t change my mind about this one. There are multiple outcomes.

The ISPs may realize people use a lot of bandwidth for pirating, and will try to cash in by catering to them. P2P technology will evolve to overcome throttling as well as anything else in its way. At the same time, I would not be surprised to see the market share of small ISPs grow. Small mesh networks like Gilgongo (#12) mentioned could spring up as well. Last year I took a class at my job about wireless pen testing and the guy who taught it set up a mesh for his neighborhood. I bet we will have free public wifi in the US within the next decade, too. As our internet in this country speeds up, anonymous surfing technology like Tor will become more useful and more popular.

This ruling is not going to stop the internet age from continuing to be a huge data-drenched love-fest. Now that average people have a taste of the freedom the internet provides, I think it will be hard for “Them” to take it away.
Anonymous

The internet in the United States might just be slowing down a bit.
Duffong

The justices are mostly old crusty folks. Some are almost a century old. How on earth are they going to be able to rule on decisions that get more and more techy as the world accelerates digitally?
- Phlip
  
  Because they just ruled “your paper supplier can refuse to sell you paper if they dislike what you print on it.”
- kc0bbq
  
  Because they should be ruling on the Constitutionality of a law and nothing more. Understanding technology really has no bearing on whether or not the government is overstepping its bounds.
  
  Worry more about the fact that most legislators haven’t been outside of Congress for 40 years. You can’t stay in the Washington bubble for decades at a time and have a grasp on the real world. The people making the laws need to understand the technology. The same goes for the permanent parts of the executive beaurocracy.
Stu Mark

Interesting reading the court’s ruling: http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/common/opinions/201004/08-1291-1238302.pdf

I don’t get what Justices Sentelle, Tatel, and Randolph were thinking. I mean, I can read the opinion, but it leaves me baffled. Are they thinking that corporations shouldn’t be regulated, or is it just that they think this is a commerce matter and not about communication regulation?

Also, will we soon see providers advertising No-Limit Internet, Where All Bits Are Treated Equal?
- Phlip
  
  > Are they thinking that corporations shouldn’t be regulated?
  
  Diiiing! What do we have for him, Johnie??!
  
  C-:
  - Stu Mark
    
    Philip – Haha! Yeah, I feel that it’s probably that. And what a bummer if that’s the case.
Day Vexx

It’s not the published ones we’ve been discussing. Just curious– what’s the stats on the unpublished ones?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Four. And once again, it doesn’t imply that you did anything evil (although two of them were insulting). Sometimes many people being slightly off-topic or questionably civil calls for vigorous redirection of the thread.
Stephen

EFF wrote: “So while we are big supporters of net neutrality, we are glad that today’s ruling has reasserted the important limits on the FCC’s authority to regulate the Internet.”

This is confusing. They lobby the government for Net Neutrality but object to the government enforcing Net Neutrality. Do they want the Government to run a series of public service announcements, but make it voluntary? Why not just run the public service announcements themselves? What is the lobbying for?
Anonymous

This is nothing but good news. Do we really want the FCC poking their nose into every traffic flow and router to make sure that our ISPs are only allowing the “approved” traffic? What about phone service, or gaming? I for one would pay more for an internet service that prioritized gaming traffic over bittorrent traffic. The last thing we need is the naughty word and wardrobe malfunction police telling ISPs what they can and can’t do with their own networks.
Anonymous

What’s your choice?

Comcast and ATT destroying internet freedom or the FCC destroying internet freedom.

Take your pick.
- Anonymous
  
  I can fire Comcast or Time Warner and get another provider. The FCC, on the other hand …
Phlip

The thing about iPad payola is – that’s how saturation bombing marketing works. U get a bounce from pimping what everyone else is pimping; no payola needed at all.

That is the way of things.
- http://www.xeni.net Xeni Jardin
  
  I don’t know if you’re implying that Boing Boing covered the iPad as some kind of heretofore undiscovered payola for the purpose of blog traffic bursts, but that’s also bullshit. I think the top-trafficked posts prior to this were about carved Crayola crayons, and something about a kitten or a Dalek cake. The silliest things win the traffic lottery sometimes, and we have little control or ability to predict.
  - Phlip
    
    I didn’t read most of this thread, and didn’t notice someone else had openly accused you! Collateral damage! C-:
    - arkizzle / Moderator
      
      “I didn’t read most of this thread..”
      
      Phlip, seeing as how you are the most prolific commenter in this thread, I beg you: read before commenting. It saves so many headaches.
      - Phlip
        
        http://xkcd.com/481/
- Stu Mark
  
  I’d want to see some evidence of BoingBoing intentionally trying to get a traffic bounce from pimping. It doesn’t seem like them at all. This iPad business seems more like Xeni’s a geek who digs what she digs and gets excited about it. I listened to her talking about the iPad on This Week in Tech and she seems sincere. She sounds like me when I’m with my friends, geeking out about some new technology. Obviously conjecture on my part, but if anyone at BB pimps anything, I’d like to see some evidence of it, ’cause it just doesn’t smell like a BoingBoing smell to me.
  - Phlip
    
    I’m pointing out that Xeni is as much a _victim_ of saturation bombing marketing as anyone – including me, who has never been anywhere near an iPad, and who am not terribly excited about them.
    
    (Not to play the victim card, either…)
    
    Xeni: Props for whatever it was you wrote. And do iPads fix Apple’s common bugs with the Home and End keys??
    - Stu Mark
      
      Ah, I see. Yeah, I get that. I was reacting to the concept of pimping (your term). Do I understand it correctly now that it was not your intent to suggest that Xeni was pimping the iPad? Or am I still not getting it?
      
      And not for nothin’, but I really do enjoy civilized discourse. Beats the hell out of what I should be doing, which is more laundry. :-P
      - Phlip
        
        I didn’t read her post; I’m primarily reacting to _everyone’s_ deluge of iPad hysteria…
      - Stu Mark
        
        Right on, I hear ya. No bigs, perfectly understandable. These aren’tt the ‘droids you’re looking for.
dorkhero

Deep breath everyone. No need to panic… yet.

If you check out the Wired article linked above: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/fcc-next/
you will see that this will just lead to the FCC reclassifying ISPs so they will fall under the FCC’s jurisdiction. Then the ISPs will take it to court and the process will start all over again.

By the time all this gets worked out it will be 2012, the Mayans will have returned, Raptured everyone to Valhalla, and none of this will matter any more.
mdh

why would the FCC regulate an anti-trust issue?
Stephen

Now can we drop the pretense that it was all or nothing and the bill could not be amended? Since the bill actually was amended!
Anonymous

Consider the FCC’s regulation of radio and television. I’m completely in favor of Net Neutrality, but is FCC regulation what we really want? America is a capitalist country. Don’t pay ISPs who selectively slow service, and subscribe to those which don’t. No others exist? Find like-minded people on a place like Boingboing, and create one.
_OM_

“I don’t get what Justices Sentelle, Tatel, and Randolph were thinking.”

…I suspect they were thinking about all that bribe money waiting for them in those Swiss Bank accounts that the MafRIAA and the WiMPAAs left for them.
Anonymous

Verizon is more subtle than Comcast.

Comcast threw spurious ICMP into my connections whenever their worm farm pushed traffic in my segment past a certain level, and did short total service disconnects every couple of weeks in the wee hours of the morning – presumably technicians performing maintenance and upgrades that they didn’t bother to inform customers or management about. They used to do lots of simple-minded, customer-contemptuous port blocking, for example blocking SMTP leaving their network from customer machines (thus making it impossible to run your own mail service) but permitting SMTP between customers (thus providing high-speed breeding conditions for email malware). This heavy-handed type of stuff is very easy to detect. I jumped ship for FIOS at first opportunity.

Verizon is much less wormy, the amount of malicious traffic bouncing off my defenses is far less. However, they do stuff like provide instructions on how to avoid their DNS interception, in response to online criticism, but then as soon as the controversy died down (oh, kwitcherbichingeek they let you opt out) verizon reconfigured to intercept the supposedly non-intercepted DNS also. This is much harder to spot for non-techies and a very clever way to exploit the nature of news in a search engine driven age (search for Verizon DNS redirection, you will find lots of people “proving” they don’t, even though now they do… again). I believe (though I cannot prove) that when they want to shape traffic, they blackhole rather than insert ICMP, because it’s impossible to prove without access to their infrastructure. Whaddya mean we dropped your packets because your segment got congested? Can you prove that?

I use heavy encryption at home and I monitor all incoming packets. I am a network architect and the director of research and development for the computing division of a consortium of hospitals. My use of the internet is mostly web browsing and Secure Shell (I am a hard-core CLI kind of guy, like most people at my level of my trade, but large portions of the web are no longer useable without a graphical browser, which is a great big fuck you to blind people but that’s another rant entirely).
johnny

Wow. I first saw an article about this decision on fark. I expected the ignorant bedwetting commentary there, but I’m surprised that it’s even worse here.

The question before the court wasn’t whether it was acceptable for someone to redirect your google searches to bing, or to throttle your access to boingboing. The question was, does the FCC have a congressional mandate to regulate this. The answer is clearly no. The FCC Act doesn’t mention the internet.

When the outrages predicted here begin to occur, people will be upset enough that congress will act. That’s why it’s unlikely that they will occur. Please people, change your underpants and wait until these horrors happen before you shit your drawers again. If this stuff happens, congress will act.

Seriously, most of the commenters in these threads seem to be qualified to be legislators in Illinois. Let’s think of the worst possible outcome, and run about screaming that it’s imminent.
- Chrs
  
  I’d be happier if the decision hadn’t resulted in a step in the direction of that worst outcome.
  
  What I’m worried about is the milder version of that worst outcome, the one that won’t come with the full outrage, where sites just have to pay more for better bandwidth. I strongly dislike this. It favors established companies even more so than they already are, and in general this discourages innovation.
VagabondAstronomer

Got my bulletin about this earlier. Not good. Curious to see how this plays out with the proposed National Broadband Plan.
DOuglas3

Well said johnny.
The way to get desirable regulation is to have congress or state legislatures pass appropriate laws.
It is not to pretend that an existing law that allows regulation of something else magically applies to the thing you want to regulate, when it clearly doesn’t.
Day Vexx

Well, I’ll keep at it, then.
thequickbrownfox

There’s currently an ad campaign on Australian TV for one of the largest ISP/Telco’s. The friendly ad lady tells you that their new internet plan will allow you to “download full-length movies, computer games and music”.

I keep expecting her to give a “wink, wink”, t0RR3ntz!!FTw!
Anonymous

I can’t say that I’m remotely surprised something like this happens when the white house is occupied by hollywood’s puppet.