The End of Net Neutrality

The FCC voted this morning to nullify 2015’s Open Internet Order and its strong net neutrality rules, substituting a flimsy replacement with a deeply (and deliberately) incorrect technical justification.

The battle is lost. What of the war? Here’s what happens next, and what you can do to help.

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So where do we go from here? Where do we go from here? Many of you know I am a strong advocate of free speech and that includes the right to offend provided it does not promote hate or violence.

You are welcome to attack my political or if I had any, religious views because I justify them with logic which is always open to question. There are other areas of my life, my partner, for example which you are not allowed to question.

An end to net neutrality is a pre-cursor to the end of these discussions however and potentially a push from big business to take over and a loss of our ability to play an active role in defining the world in which we live.

I know net neutrality is already a joke in some parts of the world:

  • In Thailand for viewing some Facebook accounts you can be imprisoned1,
  • China regularly block several sites and have put people to death

I won’t go on, it’s too easy. I hope we can find a way to stand up to this together. I suspect I may be fighting a losing battle here, but I hope to be shown wrong,

1 I wish this were not true but from personal experience I had a cousin of my ex wife murdered last year for talking out about the military coop. I used to feel safe in Thailand.

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@bryanlunduke had this to say:

Noah Chelliah commented on the subject towards the end of this episode:

An American federal agency.

Which was issued by the FCC and thus is only valid within the United States.

A replacement which is only valid within the United States.

Given that we already have strong net neutrality legislation in the EU, and that the FCC likely doesn’t give a shit what those outside (or maybe even inside) the United States thinks, I’m going to say: not a lot. But we feel for ya.

In the United States.

That’s not “net neutrality”, that’s the result of diktats handed down by cruel people concerned only with their own grasp on power. There’s a huge difference between being persecuted, injured or even murdered for making public your beliefs or your opinions, and being pissed off because Verizon are throttling connections to the streaming site of NBC, a Comcast company.

and anything with a american po-box.

… so, the United States then.

This will still be felt worldwide, since a lot of internet traffic comes from the US.
map

(Yes that is a very small sample size, and Piwik countries are not very accurate - It thinks my ip is US when it should be NZ - but you get the idea)

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no, that means anything that an american service-man can use - e.g. on an american air-base.

(and yes I have seen the homer episode where he steps on and off american soil in an american airbase, but as someone who used to work in the postal service, the distinction has been made).

Points made by @bryanlunduke and Noah were that the internet situation in the USA will go back to what it was in 2015. Was it utter chaos? Also, many of the issues with the internet in the USA are directly linked to government involvement. It is a bit ironic that, when the internet began, there were many cries of “don’t let the government get their hands on it” and now, that is precisely what is being called for, because government always makes everything better. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Interesting that the big pushers for Net Neutrality are companies that are big supporters of DRM.

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In which case they’ll probably get their Internet access from the DoD, or from a local ISP if they live off base. Either way, US net neutrality legislation will be moot.

Net neutrality will affect US ISP consumers rather than consumers of US companies’ services. Most major US tech companies have come out against the changes, and large internetwork carriers absolutely hate this shit. You’ll likely hear more from them if US consumer ISPs try stupid fuckery like switching from peering at IXes to forcing other providers to take transit instead.

Very true. In fact, according to this article, nothing has been lost. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has overall charge of ISPs, and they already have a bunch of data protection regulations in place, like GLBA, Sarbaines-Oxley, HIPAA, etc.

If the FCC were allowed to pursue these rules it would create confusion through varying regimes for different parts of communications industry because the FCC’s rules zero-in on who holds the data, not what the data are.

Seems to me to be another government overreach, in which they put a completely different department in charge of it, creating contradictory rules and making it that much harder to do business.

Are you sure about this? If you go to my website, and unless you need an electronics consultancy their is no reason why you should, it makes no difference. I am hosted in the UK and I assume your ISP is UK based but it does limit my access to the US market and your access to US based websites. Personally I’m not concerned about this as I currently have enough contracts in the UK to keep me busy but I am sure you understand my point.


If memory serves me correct this website is hosted by Bytemark and so also UK based but I could be wrong on this @sil, @jonobacon, @jeremy please correct me if I have made an error here.

They never replied, but a while back I recall @sil quoting Bytemark as his prefer-ed solution.

I also recall that Washington State are repealing the recent moves from washington DC over net neurality.