Gadgetory

okay I'm looking at the homepage of the verge right now and it says we won the internet back so TL DR the FCC decided not to mess up the internet for future generations it's safe from the evil Internet Service Providers yeah which is pretty huge news I mean last year the net neutrality rules were struck down right the FCC decided to propose new ones which everybody thought were awful and would destroy the Internet and now here we are basically a year later and looks like things are gonna be in good shape it's a classic comeback story so for the past year the Federal Communications Commission has been trying to implement new rules to protect net neutrality which is a principle that all data on the Internet no matter who it's going to or where is coming from should be treated equally right can't slow it down just because it's a website you don't like exactly which is great and everybody wants that protect it or at least advocates of net neutrality which is mostly everybody aside from the big internet providers right and so the old net neutrality rules were struck down in court because they didn't have solid legal footing and so for the past year the FCC has been trying to figure out what the right legal footing is and today it's come forward and it said it's going to use title 2 to enforce these strong net neutrality rules and that's exactly what net neutrality advocates have wanted them to do and so this is an idea about not allowing like slow and fast lanes on the Internet so there are going to be three big rules here as far as net neutrality protections and those three rules are that internet providers aren't going to be able to block any web sites or data or services as long as they're legal you'll be able to get them they're not gonna be able to throttle any websites or data or services and they're not going to allow paid fast lanes so no company's gonna be able to pay their way to make sure that their stuff goes faster while some other website some small guy gets slower so title 2 is something that the FCC has been using for a long time to regulate telephone networks it's well established it it's pretty much something that covers all communications and when the internet arrived they made a distinction between a telephone network and an information service provider an ISP which is what a lot of people will call the telephone company or cable come in it's giving you the Internet and they said that they weren't providing sort of this transit this communication service they were an information service and so they be regulated differently title 2 would basically bring them back in-house for the FCC to regulate the same way they have done for the telephone companies for decades so that's why people think it's stronger legal footing for them to stand on in court we don't know yet if that's going to be true a lot of advocates think the title 2 is great but AT&T and the other you know beginner providers they think there's a lot of holes in FCC's argument yeah I mean they've said well if you're gonna regulate us you know like you do telephone carriers then are you gonna regulate Facebook and Skype and you know any company that basically is communication over the Internet and I think one of the things the FCC made clear was that they are going to treat the network operators like a utility but not the application layer so they won't try and regulate you know your facebook chat just because it's a communication that's happening online that doesn't mean it falls under title 2 for them and the really big deal here is that for the first time the FCC is going to put mobile internet under title 2 as well right so previously mobile internet had just a few net neutrality protections but it basically still gave you know wireless carriers like AT&T the ability to block and throttle to really to some extent right yeah I mean I feel like we've written a bunch of articles about services when it comes to mobile where you're getting throttled by the company even though you're paying for unlimited data and I know that that's actually gone not just to the SEC but the FTC so and the FCC actually specifically calls that out that's something that won't be allowed they won't be able to throttle just because you're on a limited data and and let your saying you know we probably won't see instances where for some reason the face time map is blocked because the carrier is worried about it right and the flipside of that is you know companies like t-mobile we're trying to entice customers in by saying oh if you sign up with us you'll get free music and none of that music will count against your data cap right so it's a really controversial and it sounds like that's probably not going to fly under these new rules which is probably a good thing I mean t-mobile's basically choosing which services are going to win if Spotify you don't have to pay for the data you're going to use Spotify and you're not going to use whatever little company you do have to pay for data use for right yeah I mean that's always been sort of this start up argument is that if you want innovation if you want more you know great new companies you want the next Facebook to happen you can't give this benefit to the incumbents by saying oh there's no data charge increasingly we'll be paying for things you know by the gigabyte and so people will be sort of prioritized to use whatever spree exactly and so the FCC's new rules are so little bit vague around this around what will fly and what won't fly it said that you know it's happy to have companies go up to it and say hey is this gonna be okay but as far as something like sponsored data goes it has said explicitly that's definitely not going to be okay and so I think we probably are gonna see a lot less of services like that and then you know I think another thing that was kind of interesting we saw today was that all the stock prices for these cable and telephone companies went up you would expect it to be the opposite it feels like the proposal was what net neutrality advocates asked for and the opposite of what these guys raising cable companies for ever basically have been saying that title two or really strong net neutrality rules are going to hamper an innovation get a hamper investment and it seems like that's probably a bluff well yeah I mean the market certainly thinks so I think the big thing that we saw was the ISPs are getting pulled into title two which is often referred to you people we say oh hey we're making the internet a utility we're gonna treat it like the telephone companies you know which is a utility closely monitored by the government but the FCC was very clear to say we're not going to be regulating any rates meaning Comcast or Verizon or AT&T whoever provides the broadband to your home can still charge you what they whatever they want and could charge you for a certain amount per gigabyte and so I think investors feel like that's really the future of their business as we consume more and more data online we'll end up paying you know for that data not getting some unlimited plan and if they can charge what they want you know that means it'll be a much higher business FCC has been like very clear about you know it's utility like but they're not strictly utilities in the classic sense there's not going to be extra taxes or tariffs and like you said they're not going to be regulating the rates which is is a big deal for it basically keeps things as it has been right I mean the balance that Tom wheeler had to strike was how do we make sure none of these sort of boogeymen of the worst you know dystopian internet where it's controlled by a few companies happens and he also had to make sure that he didn't you know in some way really cripple these companies or their ability to you know innovate or invest in the future you know and we'll see you know it's probably gonna end up in court but it seems like with the proposal if the telco stocks went up and the net neutrality advocates are cheering you know you kind of hit that balance and I know a lot of them are threatening that they would stop or halt investments I think was AT&T actually said it was gonna haul some gigabit investment until it found out what the new rules were but sprint I think like a month ago actually filed with the FCC and said well you title two and you do it lightly it's probably gonna be fine right will still be investment and so that you know there's a wireless provider saying exactly what you know everybody expects is true yeah I mean Verizon said in their sort of public policy statements if you guys use title two it'll really hurt us but when they're talking to their investors behind closed doors they say well title two it's actually not gonna hurt us you know so there's a lot of you know sort of posturing to try and get a win on Capitol Hill to try and get the policies they want implemented in the end it may not make a big difference you know the internet will keep growing and these businesses will continue to exist so despite all that we're still pretty certain that one internet provider or another is going to bring these mutiny rules to court yeah I think so I mean I read a bunch of blog posts from 18 Verizon and they were basically saying these are the ways you could avoid going to court you know dear FCC like if you don't want to end up back in court why don't you try this and Tom wheeler kind of threw that in their face I mean he I think he went with a really strong proposal he emphasized title 2 which is what the hit all asked him not to do and he followed the lead of President Obama so the net neutrality advocates I've spoken to think title 2 is a way stronger case for them to present them what they did last time and I expect yeah over the next year they'll be in court quite right yeah no you're right and those is blog posts very much read like threats to me and the FCC in what it said today we still haven't seen the full proposal but what it said today it's trying to make it abundantly clear that it feels it is on extremely strongly Google legal grounds though title 2 is the big story here it's pulling from a handful of other areas in order to say we have the authority to impose these rules we have the authority to reclassify you and the FCC is has more success with classification than applying you know rules under wonky legal arrangements right I mean the interesting thing about today is also that for a lot of people it feels like a big moral victory you know we put up a post on the site like we won back the internet and I know John Oliver had a couple of shows this year about this it's such a bizarre arcane topic you know and yet people get really fired up about it it's true and that made a huge deal that's just it wouldn't exactly say that was John Oliver but John Oliver basically crashed their website and brought a ton of a new attention to the topic I mean Tom wheeler knows that he's been called a dingo by John Oliver which is it's pretty crazy and you know President Obama definitely seems to have a pretty huge effect especially all the continued outpouring of support for title 2 afterward right like you said it definitely feels like the huge net neutrality victory that advocates have been waiting for for a year if not longer right I mean you know there are sort of large global bodies that consider the internet a human right and by saying it's a utility we're kind of moving it towards that it's not something that's offered to you by a business it's something that the government is heavily invested in and which every citizen you know has a right to and you know will be protected and enshrined and the thing is even these rules aren't going to dramatically change anything in the short term this basically is just saying that the Internet's progression as it's being moving forward is going to continue right as we've known it we were asking them not to mess things up exactly and these rules hopefully are gonna not miss things out