Mother Jones: "Net Neutrality Finally Dies at Ripe Old Age of 45"

[villager]

Apparently net neutrality is officially dead. The Wall Street Journal reports today that the FCC has given up on finding a legal avenue to enforce equal access and will instead propose rules that explicitly allow broadband suppliers to favor companies that pay them for faster pipes:

The Federal Communications Commission plans to propose new open Internet rules on Thursday that would allow content companies to pay Internet service providers for special access to consumers, according to a person familiar with the proposal.

The proposed rules would prevent the service providers from blocking or discriminating against specific websites, but would allow broadband providers to give some traffic preferential treatment, so long as such arrangements are available on "commercially reasonable" terms for all interested content companies. Whether the terms are commercially reasonable would be decided by the FCC on a case-by-case basis.

....The FCC's proposal would allow some forms of discrimination while preventing companies from slowing down or blocking specific websites, which likely won't satisfy all proponents of net neutrality, the concept that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. The Commission has also decided for now against reclassifying broadband as a public utility, which would subject ISPs to much greater regulation. However, the Commission has left the reclassification option on the table at present.

So Google and Microsoft and Netflix and other large, well-capitalized incumbents will pay for speedy service. Smaller companies that can't—or that ISPs just aren't interested in dealing with—will get whatever plodding service is left for everyone else. ISPs won't be allowed to deliberately slow down traffic from specific sites, but that's about all that's left of net neutrality. Once you've approved the notion of two-tier service, it hardly matters whether you're speeding up some of the sites or slowing down others.

This might have been inevitable, for both legal and commercial reasons. But that doesn't mean we have to like it.

<snip>

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/04/net-neutrality-finally-dies-ripe-old-age-of-45

[Prophet 451]

1. No-one can say they weren't warned

Us techies have been trying to raise the alarm about this for years but no-one, not even most liberals, have been interested.

[villager]

2. Wonder where we'll virtually organize after they make connectivity more and more expensive?

Oh wait -- that's exactly the idea.

[adirondacker]

3. ...---... nt

[Dragonfli]

4. It is a good thing the FCC is not headed by an industry insider

Or else there would be no will or inclination to re-classify broadband as a public utility blocking the ability of profit to rig traffic.

Oh wait, an industry insider was appointed and we got screwed.

The Commission has also decided for now against reclassifying broadband as a public utility, which would subject ISPs to much greater regulation.

Well, you know what they say you get what you pay for, and the real people my friend (not the way more deserving corporate people) could not afford to buy an appointee that would look out for them, serves us right I guess for being a collective of broke as serfs.

[blkmusclmachine]

5. Terrible news. But expected. Yay, "democracy" (IF you can AFFORD it...)