T3H Official Net Neutrality Thread and Poll

[Witness]

Just saw that the Swiss passed last month a Net Neutrality law:

Abs. 1) Die Anbieterinnen von Zugang zum Internet übertragen Informationen, ohne dabei zwischen Sendern, Empfängern, Inhalten, Diensten, Diensteklassen, Protokollen, Anwendungen, Programmen oder Endgeräten technisch oder wirtschaftlich zu unterscheiden.

https://www.digitale-gesellschaft.ch/20 ... geschafft/

Roughly translated:
"Par. 1 The ISPs transmit data, without distinguishing between emitters, receivers, contents, services, types of services, usages, softwares or terminal hardwares, be it technically or commercially."

There are two more commonsense paragraphs (lawful requests, network overload, security, other services like telephone, &c.).

[Abdul Alhazred]

If we gotta have net neutrality in the USA, it should be enforced by someone neutral.

Contract the Swiss to do it for us. Who is more neutral than the Swiss?

[Witness]

↑ Made me laugh.

You can also have Swiss encrypted e-mail (with double pw): https://protonmail.com/

[gnome]

Hey, my thread's back. And the results have morphed a bit.

[Witness]

House votes to reinstate Obama-era net neutrality rules

The House on Wednesday voted to reinstate Obama-era net neutrality rules prohibiting internet service providers from interfering with web traffic.

The bill passed by a 232-190 vote, mostly along party lines. Just one Republican, Rep. Bill Posey (Fla.), voted for the bill.

House Democrats pushed their measure, dubbed the Save the Internet Act, through the chamber in the face of opposition from conservative groups and Republican lawmakers, but the legislation will likely hit a wall in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Earlier this week the White House also came out in opposition with a threat to veto the bill if it makes it to President Trump’s desk.

The bill would reverse the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) party-line vote in 2017 to repeal the rules prohibiting broadband companies from blocking, throttling or prioritizing certain websites.
[…]
Republicans have resisted Democrats’ efforts to reinstate the rules over opposition to broadening the FCC’s oversight.

Republican lawmakers painted the Democrats’ effort as part of a “socialist agenda” with ominous warnings that setting rules for broadband providers would amount to burdensome government interference with the internet.

The GOP has introduced their own net neutrality bills that would implement prohibitions against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization. But the proposals have been nonstarters with Democrats and net neutrality advocates because they lack the enforcement mechanisms of the 2015 order, which designated broadband companies as common carriers and gave the FCC broad oversight powers.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4381 ... lity-rules


In other news, my ISP spontaneously upgraded me from 200 to 300 Mbps.
(Of course there aren't that much servers willing to send you data at that speed.)

[Witness]

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.”

https://gizmodo.com/judge-orders-fcc-to ... 1843202071

[gnome]

I am very interested in that. But I think it's a bit overblown. If someone did fake it I don't know why they would bother. It could have been filled with 100% legitimate comments against it and the FCC still could have said "Thanks for your opinion. We're doing this anyway." I fully expected that.

[Rob Lister]

You're right, gnome but IMO the FCC is not immune to negative publicity; it may not kill but it sure stings. Trump openly wanted to nix Net Neutrality (one of my fairly few peeves with his direction) and Pai was his man with the plan. I don't think Pai would fake the comments personally but I'm sure he wouldn't look too hard at obvious comment stuffing that supported what he fully intended to do anyway.

[gnome]

True enough. And I hope someone gets busted if what it seems to be is true.

Of course, if "someone" is in Kiselyovsk or Veles or whatever I'm not sure what anyone can do about it after the fact.

[ed]

Ok--I'll start.

Seriously in favor, because it seems clear to me that major players could nearly blacklist content they don't like, or extort money from content providers just because large segments of the population are connecting through them. I predict this would be to the detriment of users and overall quality of service.

I'm all for net neutrality, but IMO what you're describing is some sort of a post-apocalyptic end of a slippery slope that I just can't imagine coming to fruition.

Still believe that?

[gnome]

6-1 now. I wonder if sites being choosy about who they platform has affected this.

[Grammatron]

Ok--I'll start.

Seriously in favor, because it seems clear to me that major players could nearly blacklist content they don't like, or extort money from content providers just because large segments of the population are connecting through them. I predict this would be to the detriment of users and overall quality of service.

I'm all for net neutrality, but IMO what you're describing is some sort of a post-apocalyptic end of a slippery slope that I just can't imagine coming to fruition.

Still believe that?

Yes.