I'm a dummy. Smarten me.
1) Now what?
2) Affect on the future of utilizing the true value (technologically) through cryptocurrency, if any?
3) What are the foreseeable consequence through ISP's newfound unregulated consumer control and monopoly?
4) What else should I know about this decision?
Here is my prediction: The FCC deregulated the Internet today. The first changes you will see, in early 2018, will be offers from your internet provider (Comcast will probably be first), offering the “Gamer Package” or “Streaming Package”. These will be offers to specific types of internet users, offering higher internet speeds to make their experience better. “Always getting pwned at CounterStrike? Upgrade to our Gamer Package ($49.95/mo) for better gaming speed!” for example. To ensure you are excited to hear this new sales pitch, the following will happen: False Scarcity Over the holidays, there will be reports of “network saturation”, and mysterious slowdowns when streaming Netflix and YouTube content that will be attributed to “unusually high levels of network activity during the holiday week”. Gamers will rail at Microsoft because their servers are “too slow”, and the games people got for Xmas are not working well in online play mode. Geeks Getting Ignored (again) Interestingly, geeky news outlets like ArsTechnica will report that their detailed network analyses will show that the slowdowns occurred only on traffic from certain services, through specific ISPs. These will, not surprisingly, be services like Netflix, streaming to Comcast customers in large metropolitan areas. Astroturfing, Alt-Facts A suspicious number of comments on these articles will be talking about how ISPs need to create dedicated pipes for these games, so the traffic doesn’t get slowed down. These commenters will also mention that ISPs can’t afford the constant upgrades necessary to stay up to date with the latest streaming needs... False Analyses Comcast will then release a statement in January that their detailed network analysis showed a much larger than expected number of users, and promise that they are making upgrades to their equipment and services so that “customers can get the streaming experience they want.” Solution Offered By February or March, Comcast will roll out their new “high-speed” plans “in response to customer demand”. And everyone that got a new xbox for Christmas will have to upgrade their internet service if they want to be competitive in their favorite online games, or watch Netflix/YouTube/Hulu without buffering, etc. Monopolistic Opportunism Once Comcast rolls out their pricing plan, the other big names will roll out their “fast lane” plans at identical price points by mid-year. And in six months the internet will have gone from the open and accessible tool we have known for 20 years, to a set of “walled gardens” you must pay to enter, and any web site or app you use that is not owned by a Fortune 500 company, will be painfully slow to use. So you will move away from those apps, and toward the mass-market tools that the ISP monopolies have decided you will use, because they are the only apps that are a useable speed. Legal Footnotes Yeah, sure, there will be lawsuits trying to block the deregulation of the internet by the FCC, and prevent this future. The Ninth Circuit Court will rule in favor of Net Neutrality, and then be overturned by another court in another jurisdiction (cough, cough, Texas, cough, cough) that will allow business to continue while the legality of the decision to deregulate is being litigated (see: the Muslim ban), and then SCOTUS will rush through a decision - with Gorsuch as the tie-breaker - that will uphold the regulation and make any effort to apply any sort of regulation on the internet as “anti-competitive and illegal.”
Briefly, on the legal footnotes: these cases are virtually always filed in the DC Circuit. It's pretty much the go-to when it comes to regulatory stuff, and it's unlikely anyone would file elsewhere given that all the major caselaw on NN and regulatory agencies generally is from DC. Also, a lawsuit isn't as long of a longshot as you might think.
When the government is trying to defend itself from patently illegal and nefarious activity, they file in the 12th. When the public wants a friendly circuit that wants to curtail government overstepping their bounds, they file in the 9th. (See: the Muslim ban.) At least that is how I understand it. So I see it happening like this: The cases currently being filed in the 9th will be found in favor of the public and against the FCC. The FCC will file in the 12th for a summary stay against any injunctions ordered by the 9th, and will win. A Heritage Foundation/Koch-backed front organization will file their case in the 12th, attesting that the FCC ruling is reasonable and warranted. The 12th will rule in favor. There will be an uproar and more attempts by the 9th to overturn or block the key decisions in the 12th's ruling. The inter-court rivalry will eventually be rushed in front of the SCOTUS, who will rule in favor of the 12th findings, with Gorsuch being the tie-breaker. They A/B tested this exact process with the Muslim Ban, refined the process to focused point, and put all the steps in order to push through a BUNCH of pieces of law they want their friendly SCOTUS to rule on ASAP. The 9th Circuit is the dupe in this whole thing. The 12th knows that the 9th has a very pro-Constitution, liberal bias, and will jump like the ACLU at any perceived affront to their liberal, progressive values. So they line up specifically-tailored cases to poke the 9th Circuit bear, make the bear dance, then get the 12th to slap the bear for dancing, and then get SCOTUS to rule in their favor because that dancing bear over there is clearly ridiculous. They've war-gamed this out to the Nth degree...
Except what you're describing isn't how the court system works. No. One federal circuit cannot summarily override another.The FCC will file in the 12th for a summary stay against any injunctions ordered by the 9th, and will win.
Yep. You are right. I mis-remembered what happened with the Muslim ban: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-justice-kennedy-blocks-part-of-9th-circuit-ruling-on-travel-ban/
Reminds me of a joke from elementary school Kid B: My daddy is so rich he owns a Ferrari AND a jet ski! Kid C: My daddy is so rich he owns a mansion, a Ferrari and a jet ski! Kid D: My daddy is so rich he owns a judge!Also, a lawsuit isn't as long of a longshot as you might think.
Kid A: My daddy is so rich he owns a jet ski!
Thanks a lot for the input. I'd like to see where Google, Amazon, Netflix will fall into place here. Being the only actors powerful enough to make a difference in the legislation, a company could try to profit from winning over competitors' consumers by openly lobbying for neutrality. Or something, I don't know.
Well... Google, Amazon, and Netflix (and Facebook) are the golden geese for the ISPs. These are the sites that drive 90% of internet traffic. So if I am a smart ISP, I leave those companies alone. (Mostly.) Play nice with them. Give them a good price to make sure their data always gets the fast pipes, because these are the sites that have the "suction" to force consumers to pony up for faster speeds to their homes. See, I can charge Google a million dollars, or I can charge a million people $49.95 so they can reach Google. Going with Option 2 keeps Google friendly with me, and lets me gouge ALL of their customers for fee, with the implicit approval of Google themselves.
Realistically speaking? There will be scattered incidents of ISPs temporarily blocking this that or the other website that will resolve quickly. There will be a pissing match between Netflix and Comcast (or Amazon and Charter, or Youtube and Verizon) whereby Comcast points out that Netflix is a third of all bandwidth and that they made 9 billion in revenues in 2017. Netflix will go fuckin' waaah and send out emails, Comcast will go fuckin' waaah and send out emails. They'll settle for an undisclosed amount and things will return to normal until some other company plays "who run Bartertown". Keyboard Kommandoes will chase another squirrel once they realize that their Internet is largely unaffected and everybody screaming at the top of their lungs right now will be disregarded in the popular press and online media because they were WRONGWRONGWRONGWRONGWRONG and we didn't suddenly grow a Great Firewall of China. In the meantime, Netflix, Alphabet, Amazon and other streaming services will start pumping money into congresscritters willing to sponsor a bill asserting that the Internet is a utility. The discussion will again be shaped in terms of "Cletus won't get internet without free trade"/"I couldn't buy Pearl Jam tickets because Comcast owns Ticketmaster!" strawmen so that giant corporations on either side of the issue can drum up a witch hunt against each other and both sides will again work themselves into a lather over what could happen rather than what is happening. ___________________________________________________________________________ Verizon doesn't hate Net Neutrality because it prevents them from shaking you down. They hate it because it prevents them from shaking Netflix down. Verizon knows that if they piss you off, you'll probably bring the roof down on them because they're acting anti-consumer... but they also know that if they stay below your pain point (and stick to a dull itch) you're too disinterested to do anything. After all, it wasn't the price gouging that got Enron in the end, it was the tapes. Finally, Verizon knows that a temporary win is still a win, and they have better odds shaping any (inevitable) legislation declaring the Internet a utility as it winds its way through Congress than they do dealing with whatever this month's FCC decides. And hey - if they can keep under the radar they may not have to deal with that (inevitable) legislation for years. 'cuz really. IF the Democrats retake the Senate, and IF the ISPs aren't abject dicks between now and then, is anyone really going to care about restoring "net neutrality" if things aren't substantially different? There are no ISPs calculating how much extra they can shaft you out of for artificially raising your ping 10ms so they can lower it again. They're all busy calculating how many percentage points per year they can raise your rate before you angrily remind congress they're an unregulated monopoly.
Others have replied, but I'll add my $0.02 (which is worth about that much). 1, 3, 4 Lawsuits will doubtless ensue in the short term. Beyond that, things get fuzzier. I think this will be bad for consumers overall. ISPs have to be a tad careful; they need to not piss people off enough that they actually get worked up about it and revolt and/or elect more regulation-friendly politicians. Whether they already have remains to be seen, but the ISPs evidently decided it was worth the risk. kleinbl00 mentioned that ISPs want to go after Netflix, but I think he understates the effect on consumers. The ISPs didn't spend this much money on lobbying and risk the consumer backlash without some expectation of a payout. Netflix getting charged more is the least of our worries; that actually happened already, back before the FCC's now-repealed Title II classification. But it's inevitable that those charges will get passed on to us. And somehow I don't think that the ISP market is going to suddenly become cheaper or more competitive. Plus, it's going to make it that much harder for a competitor to Netflix to enter the market. Plus, the landscape has changed. Comcast has an ownership share in Hulu, and I expect we'll see some kind of prioritization. At least initially, I imagine it'll be more like what AT&T did, where they had mobile data caps except for specific services. So at least at the beginning, it'll be stuff like that. Cable companies are worried. As The Consumerist pointed out back in 2015, traditional cable service is on its way out. Not only that, but (based on those numbers, at least), those cable subscribers were much more profitable. So they have to find a way to recoup those losses somehow, and they're going to find increasingly subtle and numerous ways to do it here. They're betting that despite the backlash online, too few people actually care to reach a critical mass that could force changes. 2 I doubt much. ISPs don't have any real reason to be worried about cryptocurrency, and I'm not sure that big businesses in general are unhappy about the idea of a non-government currency.
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Not much immediately. I would expect a lawsuit challenging the rule change to be filed by the end of the day, possibly with a request for an injunction to preserve the current rules that are in place. Even if that injunction isn't granted, there are far too many public eyes on the issue right now for Comcast et al. to do much of anything too anti-competitive. Especially seeing as they've been wiggling NN violations within the current rules for years now anyway (Comcast's usage caps). Down the road, ISPs might start discriminating against traffic, specifically against competing content like Neflix and YouTube. ISPs purposely allowing interconnection hubs to clog up and slow Netflix was the catalyst for implementing Net Neutrality rules. Outright blocking or paywalling sites is unlikely considering the amount of public scrutiny on the issue right now. Site blocking is unlikely ever since it would give the rhetorical equivalent of a nuke to NN supporters. The slowing of competing services is almost a given unless the service pays the ISP. I don't think your going to see paid fast lanes on the consumer side, at least for some time. Most of this is going to take place between Google/Netflix/etc and ISPs playing interconnectivity games. Think of the games of chicken that Dish Network and cable channels play once or twice a year over rates and package composition. The fight's not over. There is now going to be a big court fight over whether the landscape of US broadband has changed enough to justify such a massive rule change. The case itself is probably going to be pretty interesting when the FCC has explain why they ignored the massive fraud that took place in the commenting process, Freedom of Information Act requests, requests for information from state Attorney Generals regarding said fraud, and why the FCC ignored organic comments that were 99.7% pro-NN. The courts have already ruled in favor of net neutrality before and none of the circumstances leading up to these rulings have changed. Then there's congress. Congress can throw out the FCC's new rule right now. They also could codify Net Neutrality into law. A lot of people have believed for a while that the whole show with the FCC was to get congress to "settle" the NN debate by codifying rules into law, but the problem with this is that congress is so flush with ISP cash that there is a real possibility that any rules they codify into law will be so filled with loopholes as to be useless. It has happened before with the FCC's original NN rules that Verizon got the courts to throw out. This is why it is still important to contact your representatives. Best case is they actually listen and we get a decent Net Neutrality law that can't be thrown out easily and the worst is that it makes the public's voice unavoidable when they sell out the internet to large ISPs. Don't stop there either, contact anyone that will be challenging them in 2018 or 2020 and get them on the record supporting meaningful Net Neutrality rules to put pressure on the incumbent. Keep doing this every election cycle until we get meaningful rules protecting the internet. Net Neutrality is nearly universally supported by every political tribe in this day of extremely divisive politics and supporting it scores free points for nearly any representative. 1) Now what?
3) What are the foreseeable consequence through ISP's newfound unregulated consumer control and monopoly?
4) What else should I know about this decision?
Not smart btw. Just a pissed-off layperson. 1) The repeal will likely go to court, where it may eventually be overturned. However, this takes time and during the court battle Comcast, Verizon et al will be able to run wild. 2) Don't know much about this one. Sounds like if you can't get to sites for trading cryptocurrency (if that's how it works) it will be hard to justify spending money on it. 3) No clue but it gives me a bad feeling. These telecoms have proven ill intent many times before. Stifling innovation, gagging certain viewpoints and cutting off specific users' access to specific sites would be scary. Who knows if they'll actually go there but I don't put anything past Comcast. 4) It isn't the end, but it may be the beginning of the end. Losing the internet as a tool to collaborate and pool knowledge would be a huge blow to many scientific efforts. Additionally, this may provide extra incentive for companies to leave the US, since outside of America there are still several countries who have codified net neutrality into law. It just sucks, basically, and there's only so much we can do to stop it now. Unless we all became single-issue voters regarding NN.