People are pissed at Tom Wheeler, head of the FCC and former cable lobbyist. http://www.vocativ.com/tech/internet/former-industry-lobbyist-just-killed-net-neutrality/?ModPagespeed=noscript Today the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will propose new rules that allow Internet providers to favor companies that pay more for faster Internet speeds. In other words, net neutrality—the idea that every web company, big or small, should have access to the same pipes — is officially dead. What does this mean for you? Probably higher monthly bills for your Internet connection. The Internet used to be an egalitarian place where great ideas flourish. But clearly, money talks. If you’re looking to direct your rage at someone in particular, consider Tom Wheeler, the current chairman of the FCC and the brains behind the new plan. Wheeler is a longtime Washington insider and a former cable industry lobbyist—and people are singling him out as the grim reaper of the open Internet. Another on Hacker News chirps: ”In six months FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will be a VP at NBC Universal/Comcast. Not a bribe; just coincidence.” Wheeler is a somewhat controversial guy even in Washington, which usually has a pretty high tolerance for potential conflicts of interest. Back when Obama appointed him in 2013 to be the head of the FCC, plenty of critics were quick to dismiss him as an insider who would favor big cable companies. ”All of the senators in the Commerce Committee know Tom as a lobbyist who funnels funds to them, not as a stand-up guy from a regulatory agency who is able to take heat,” one veteran Washington telecommunications insider told Reuters last year. If the deal goes through (the official rules won’t be set for a few more weeks), there will be winners and losers. The winners will be the Internet providers themselves (Verizon, Comcast, etc.), who will be able to capture new fees from media companies. The second group of winners are large, privately held Internet companies — from Amazon to Google — that can afford to offer their customers faster browsing speeds. Which brings us to the losers: startups, small businesses and the average customer. Net neutrality theoretically ensures equal footing for new media companies trying to offer better products for the web. But that will become impossible for new companies if the data plans to host those new enterprises become too burdensome. As Fred Wilson, the popular venture capitalist, writes, “Telcos will pick their preferred partners, subsidize the data costs for those apps, and make it much harder for new entrants to compete with the incumbents.” Which is VC-speak for: Sorry, we’re not going to fund your new app. Wheeler, for his part, came out with a statement yesterday maintaining that the new rules will actually favor consumers: ”There are reports that the FCC is gutting the Open Internet rule. They are flat out wrong. Tomorrow we will circulate to the Commission a new Open Internet proposal that will restore the concepts of net neutrality consistent with the court’s ruling in January.” No one really seems to be buying it. As news of the new FCC ruling broke yesterday, an online petition directed at Wheeler and the FCC surfaced. “The future of the open Internet is in your hands,” it says. “And yet you have proposed rules that would actually break it.” Net Neutrality Finally Dies at Ripe Old Age of 45 http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/04/net-neutrality-finally-dies-ripe-old-age-of-45 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: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304518704579519963416350296? 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. How The FCC Plans Neuter The Net https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140424/16233027022/how-fcc-plans-neuter-net-even-as-fcc-insists-everyones-got-it-all-wrong.shtml So, we already wrote about why Tom Wheeler's "open internet" proposal is problematic, but Wheeler and the FCC are hitting back on everyone who’s arguing that -- telling everyone to calm down, insisting that nothing has changed, and that they’re actually trying to preserve the old "open internet" rules from 2010 that a court tossed out earlier this year. The problem is that this is absolutely misleading -- and either the FCC doesn’t realize this or it’s not being honest. And, I’m not sure which one is more bizarre. Wheeler is, indeed, correct in saying that under the court ruling from earlier this year, in order to be able to do anything under Section 706 of the Telecom Act, they had to shift from talking about "unreasonable discrimination" (which they can’t regulate under 706) to "commercially reasonable" activities (which they can regulate). So, in effect, Wheeler is trying to argue that by basically shifting the basis for the rules and substituting in the "commercially reasonable" standard as opposed to blocking "unreasonable discrimination" (which can be done under common carrier rules, but since the FCC reclassified broadband service as not being a telco service, that’s not available), they’re now back in proper legal territory under the law. Perhaps Wheeler and his friends at the FCC think that this subtle shift in phrases to abide by the blueprint the court set out really does leave the existing rules in place. But, it’s not that simple. As Stacy Higginbotham points out, even if the FCC doesn’t want to destroy net neutrality, this subtle shift will do so anyway. To understand why, the best article to read is the one by Marvin Ammori, who has been fighting this fight for years. He argues that, unlike the CNET article above that says to "calm down," we should actually be even more worried. Because even if the FCC thinks it can stop net neutrality violations, companies are still going to get screwed. Basically, the FCC can only act after the fact, and then it’s going to come down to a fight between a big telcos’ lawyers... and a tiny startups’ lawyers. Guess who wins? The FCC will propose an incredibly vague and complicated multifactor test, one that takes into account the market conditions, technology, alternatives available to each side, competitive dynamics. This is the kind of stuff that requires very expensive expert witnesses in very expensive legal proceedings. There may be up to 16 factors listed, plus a catch-all for "other factors." So, according to the FCC, when Verizon discriminates against a startup, we shouldn’t be alarmed, because (while being discriminated against), this startup can hire a lot of expensive lawyers and expert witnesses and meet Verizon (a company worth more than $100 billion) at the FCC and litigate this issue out, with no certainty as to the rule. The startup will almost certainly lose either at the FCC or on appeal to a higher court, after bleeding money on lawyers. He’s not basing this on some theoretical crystal ball. It’s already happened -- and it’s obvious from the Court’s ruling earlier this year: Back in January, the D.C. Circuit struck down the FCC’s last attempt at net neutrality, saying that Section 706 does not permit the commission to stop nondiscrimination. It pointed to another legal decision, concerning data roaming, in which the FCC adopted a 16-factor test like the one I explained above. Based on an earlier case, the FCC can probably ban one or two specific practices, such as blocking certain websites or applications. That’s about it. So here’s the issue: the old rules were incredibly weak and nearly pointless in the first place. They didn’t apply to wireless (nor, apparently, will the new rules) and they didn’t really protect net neutrality. They were crafted, in part by the telcos, through a long-drawn out process, in which the former FCC boss tried to keep everyone happy and ended up pleasing no one. That’s why we were a little perplexed at the outrage over those rules being thrown out earlier this year in the first place. Those rules were nothing great. The problem is that this new proposal isn’t just "those same old rules" as the FCC would like you to believe. Instead, they’re the same old rules, made weaker at the critical juncture by the necessary legalese change to "commercially reasonable" and by the clear nature of what the court says the FCC is able to do under Section 706. And while some think the answer is to shift broadband back under Title II and put them under common carrier rules, that’s almost certainly a political impossibility -- which is why Wheeler is trying to thread this needle. As we’ve said for a decade now, the underlying problem is a lack of competition. These kinds of rules, including things like transparency into the crap that the telcos are pulling only matter if you have options. When you don’t, then they can be transparent as to how they’re screwing you over, and there’s really just not much you can do. And that’s kind of the situation we’re in today. Wheeler claims this is no change and people are overreacting, but what they’re realizing is that the existing rules in 2010 were kind of a joke anyway, and what little power they had to keep the internet open and non-discriminatory back then is now pretty much gone with this new wording. So, Wheeler may not want to be killing off the open internet, but the end result may be exactly that. New FCC Proposal Will Permit Discrimination Of Web Content http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-26/say-goodbye-net-neutrality-%E2%80%93-new-fcc-proposal-will-permit-discrimination-web-content Wake Up, Internet! Time to Save Yourself! https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/04/25-4 Obama Has Not Kept His Promise to Enforce Net Neutrality http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117516/fccs-new-rules-show-obama-has-not-kept-net-neutrality-promise FCC planning new Internet rules that will gut Net Neutrality. Get ready to pay more for the stuff you love online. http://boingboing.net/2014/04/23/fcc-planning-new-internet-rule.html The Wall Street Journal was first to report that The Federal Communications Commission will propose new open Internet rules this Thursday that will allow content companies to pay Internet service providers "for special access to consumers." Under the new rules, service providers may not block or discriminate against specific websites, but they can charge certain sites or services for preferential traffic treatment if the ISPs’ discrimination is "commercially reasonable." Bye-bye, Net Neutrality, and the internet as we know it. Hello, greater connectivity gap between rich and poor in America. For what it’s worth: The FCC’s current Chairman, Tom Wheeler, previously worked as a VC and lobbyist for the cable and wireless industry. The FCC Commissioners’ email addresses, to which concerned citizens might send concerned email: Tom.Wheeler@fcc.gov Mignon.Clyburn@fcc.gov , Jessica.Rosenworcel@fcc.gov , Ajit.Pai@fcc.gov , Mike.O'Rielly@fcc.gov. The FCC’s main telephone line is 1-888-225-5322. More contact information and postal mail address here. https://www.fcc.gov/contact-us Federal Communications Commission 445 12th Street, SW Washington, DC 20554 To Contact the Commissioners via E-mail Chairman Tom Wheeler: Tom.Wheeler@fcc.gov Commissioner Mignon Clyburn: Mignon.Clyburn@fcc.gov Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel: Jessica.Rosenworcel@fcc.gov Commissioner Ajit Pai: Ajit.Pai@fcc.gov Commissioner Michael O’Rielly: Mike.O'Rielly@fcc.gov To Provide Non Docketed Comments or Seek Information Complaints: File a Complaint Freedom of Information Act requests: FOIA@fcc.gov Elections & political candidate matters: campaignlaw@fcc.gov Broadcast Information: Broadcast Information Specialists To Obtain Information via Telephone 1-888-225-5322 (1-888-CALL FCC) Voice: toll-free 1-888-835-5322 (1-888-TELL FCC) TTY: toll-free 1-866-418-0232 FAX: toll-free 1-202-418-1440 Elections & political candidate matters Broadcast Information Specialists Business hours are 8:00am-5:30pm, ET n3tBin

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