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FCC Public Comment Period For Net Neutrality Ends Tomorrow, July 15 69

Posted by samzenpus from the use-your-outside-voice dept.
samzenpus (5) writes "The deadline for the FCC's public comment period on their proposed net neutrality rule is coming up fast. The final day to let the FCC know what you think is tomorrow, July 15. A total of 647,000 comments have already been sent. Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon and other tech companies are making a final push for net neutrality saying that the FCC decision, "shifts the balance from the consumers' freedom of choice to the broadband Internet access providers' gatekeeping decisions." The Consumerist has a guide to help you through the comment process, so make sure your voice is heard."
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FCC Public Comment Period For Net Neutrality Ends Tomorrow, July 15 More

FCC Public Comment Period For Net Neutrality Ends Tomorrow, July 15

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  • Next up: (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    FCC private bribery period against net neutrality to begin July 16th.

  • Don't forget to comment (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AndrewBuck ( 1120597 ) on Monday July 14, 2014 @04:06PM (#47450895)

    One of those comments was mine and I encourage others to do the same. The FCC may very well ignore the comments, but the more that there are the more it will show people how corrupt they are. Ignoring 50 comments is one thing, ignoring 650,000 comments is another thing entirely, especially when almost every single one of those comments is opposed to the policy they are proposing.

    Make your voice heard, and even if not heard by the FCC, then let it be heard by your fellow citizens that the FCC won't listen to us anymore. Our government is corrupt but most people don't realize the extent to which it is corrupt. This is a good way to show them.

    -AndrewBuck

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by zlives ( 2009072 )

      +1, also commented

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mr.123 ( 661787 )
      Also commented a few weeks ago. My senator (NY) sent me a couple of follow up emails since. They're canned emails, but at least someone is reading them.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Kelbear ( 870538 )

        That's a very important point to make, people give up on writing to their politicians because they always get canned responses, but those canned responses (at least in NJ) are relevant to the point of my letters, which meant that a staffer read the letter, understood my position, and had to pull up the relevant response template.

        In the process of doing so, the staffer adds my position to the politician's mail summary to get a sense of where their voter base stands (as only a few voters bother to even write)

    • for those who might be interested in a sample comment, my comment to the FCC. [prestovivace.biz]

      • Interesting idea sharing your actual comment. Here is mine (link is to a small pdf from the fcc site showing the text of the comment):

        http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/docum... [fcc.gov]

        Others are welcome to read the comment to get ideas for what to write but I don't recommend copy-pasting my comment as your own. Write it in your own words and say why it affects you personally. Getting 20 real, independantly written comments with personal stories matters more than getting 100 copy pasted comments. These orgs are used to g

        • "too easy to ignore" -- well I'm sure there is also a lot of "ballot stuffing" from astroturf groups and opinion shapers -- but I figure that the FCC wants to quietly pass a ruling and then cash in when they work as million dollar "consultants" for the industry they just gave a big fat kiss.

    • As was said above, the more comments there are, the more difficult it will be to ignore them. Every now and then we win one. Let us at least try.

    • Tom Wheeler has already assured me that he is a strong supporter of the Open Internet, and will fight to keep the internet open. He even thanked me for sharing my views with him. Now I feel warm and fuzzy.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I would be very disappointed if foreign governments have not provided feedback on this issue.

      For example, the Australian government and ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) have regularly had the likes of Adobe and Apple in court for "price gouging" - charging substantially more in Australia for the same digital assets that are provided in the US. (e.g.: Apple charging USD2.99 for something in Australia that's USD0.99 in the US; Adobe charging USD2000 for something that is less than USD300

    • There are likely another 650,000 who WOULD send FCC a comment but they've learned long time ago that the Corporatocracy doesn't care about public comments.

      This is just a pretense of the dog and pony show, and the only metric they care about is; "How far can we push before the Pitchforks and Torches" metric.

      • I figure it is much like writing my congress critters in that they don't care what I have to say and if I get a response it will probably be patronizing one. At least when it is a congress critter and they send out door knockers I can let them know of the poor experience of receiving a patronizing letter back. Worst example was one of my state reps who sent me a letter thanking me for my support of X when I was actually against X. At least he went door to door himself so I got to let him know what I really

  • When the FCC proposed net neutrality regulations earlier, which seemed to actually be net neutrality rules, they were sued and the courts said that they didn't have the power to implement these regulations. The regulations going forward, are these the "fast lane" type regulations? If so, the same companies will clearly not sue, but don't they still lack the power to implement these regulations?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The FCC can force this on internet companies by reclassifying their status. The courts agreed with Verizon because internet service providers are classed as information services, which doesn't allow the FCC to regulate them the same way they do other things. It's really a question of whether ISPs are "information services" or if companies like Google and sites like Slashdot are the information services, and Verizon, AT&T, etc are utilities for access to such. It's like asking whether the electric compan

      • It's like asking whether the electric company provides light in your home.

        When the electric company sells CFL at a huge discount, I think the answer to this question can honestly be "yes". See here [cpi.coop] for a $0.99 bulb that appears on Amazon.com for $6.50 (0.01 plus $6.49 shipping).

    • From what I understand, they have not yet released the new proposed regulations. They're only going to do so once the public comment period passes, and there will still be multiple commentary periods after this one before anything is actually put into force.

      Personally, I don't think they're going to try to continue with the "fast lane". Tom Wheeler may be a former lobbyist, but I think even he has realized that no one wants a "fast lane", as evidenced by 600,000+ comments from the public and members of his

  • Misrepresentation (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The fundamental problem is that TCP has a notion of "fairness" that is broken and exploitable. Fix that, and most of the pain (and corporate opportunity for tiered gain) goes away. For those interested, try and wrap your head around Flow Rate Fairness [bobbriscoe.net]. If you want to do more than add some more noise to the Aye vs. Nay shouting, read up and say something sensible, or at least mention the paper to the FCC.

  • Sick Joke (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The whole thing is a deception. It's an attempt by government to seize control over Internet communications.

    Net Neutrality originally meant: leave the internet alone, it's been working fine for years.

    Then corporations start to throttle back our bandwidth, and instead of the courts charing them with selling a fraud, or deceptive trade practices, the FCC and Obama come in with a plan to give government control over the internet, and require the ISPs to log your internet activity and just give it to police wh

    • Re:Sick Joke (Score:4, Informative)

      by AndrewBuck ( 1120597 ) on Monday July 14, 2014 @05:51PM (#47451657)

      Wow, yet another industry shill posting as AC to spread propaganda. I think you are the 4th or 5th one in this thread.

      In answer to your misinformation...

      Net Neutrality originally meant: leave the internet alone, it's been working fine for years.

      Yep, and it still does mean that. You can claim it means whatever you want, but the people areguing for common carrier status want exactly this, and nothing more.

      Then corporations start to throttle back our bandwidth, and instead of the courts charing them with selling a fraud, or deceptive trade practices

      I would be very happy to see them do this, unfortunately it would be a tough case to make because they always weasel language into the contract you sign with them saying they can "regulate speed for QOS reasons" and that your speed is "up to" some threshold, etc.

      the FCC and Obama come in with a plan to give government control over the internet, and require the ISPs to log your internet activity and just give it to police whenever they ask for it. And of course Mr. Obama and the FCC call this plan "Net Neutrality".

      This is just ludicrous. In what way is saying to ISPs "you can't discriminate based on who sends the traffic, you have to treat it all equally" equal to "governemnt control over the internet" in the pejorative sense you are intending for it to mean. I guess the government would have some control as all regulations are a form of control, but that is not what you meant. The people arguing for net neutrality want all players to have the same access to the public internet without large entites paying to prevent their data from getting through, so why would they want the government to do exactly the same thing. You were just trying to scare people into doing what the giant corps want, which is to let them screw their customers over by forcing them to pay for a connection and then pay again to make it not suck. Furthermore, your comment about logging on the internet is pretty funny in light of the Snowden leaks. Why would they need to pass a law to "log the internet" when they have been doing exactly that for years. Just more phony scaremongering to confuse people who are not well informed.

      That's right, they gave it the same name, but it has a completely different meaning.

      Nope, that was just the big ISPs and their paid shills who post AC on sites like slashdot. Go crawl back into the hole you came out of. To quote Woodie Guthrie "all you facists are bound to lose". You might win on this one and get the two tiered internet your paymasters want, but the people are slowly learning how badly they are being screwed over and eventually they will wake up and take action.

      -AndrewBuck

  • Political Absurdism (Score:5, Informative)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Monday July 14, 2014 @04:21PM (#47450979) Homepage Journal

    Quick, do you vote "yes" or "no" on the Jabberwocky?

    This [aclu.org] is the most lucid summary I've seen of the current "debate". Quoting:

    The things that bug me most about the net neutrality debate are:

    0) The whole slow lane/fast lane conception is just wrong. Internet traffic looks nothing like vehicle traffic. On roads, you have only a few lanes to put cars in. On the internet, it's more like you break up the cars and trucks into atoms (packets), mix them all together, pour them through various choke points and reassemble them at their destination no matter in what order they arrive.

    Traffic management at these levels IS needed, and managed at a e2e level by a TCP-friendly protocol (generally), and at a router level by queue management schemes like "Drop Tail". Massive improvements to drop tail, fixing what is known as "bufferbloat" with better "active queue management" (AQM) and packet scheduling schemes (FQ) such as codel, fq_codel, RED, and PIE are being considered by the IETF to better manage congestion, and the net result of these techniques is vastly reduced latency across the chokepoints, vastly improved levels of service for latency sensitive services (such as voice, gaming, and videoconferencing), with only the fattest flows losing some packets and thus slowing down - regardless of who is sending them. Politics doesn't enter into it. Any individual can make their own links better, as can any isp, and vendor.

    Some links:

    http://tools.ietf.org/html/dra... [ietf.org]
    https://datatracker.ietf.org/d... [ietf.org]
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/dra... [ietf.org]
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/dra... [ietf.org]

    Furthermore individual packets can be marked by the endpoints to indicate their relative needs. This is called QoS, and the primary technique is "diffserv".

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]

    There are plenty of problems with diffserv in general, but they are very different from thinking about "fast or slow" lanes, which are rather difficult to implement compared to any of the techniques noted above. You have to have a database of every ip address you wish to manipulate accessed in real time, on every packet, in order to implement the lanes.

    IF ONLY I could see in the typical network neutrality debater a sane understanding and discussion of simple AQM, packet scheduling, and QoS techniques, I would be extremely comforted in the idea that sane legislation would emerge. But I've been waiting 10 years for that to happen.

    We have tested, and have deployed these algorithms to dramatic reductions in latency and increased throughput on consumer grade hardware, various isps and manufacturers have standardized on various versions, (docsis 3.1 is pie, free.fr uses fq_codel, as does streamboost, as do nearly all the open source routing projects such as openwrt)

    I really wish those debating net neutrality actually try - or at least be aware of - these technical solutions to the congestion problems they seek to solve with legislation. I wouldn't mind at all legal mandates to have aqm on, by default. :)

    It makes a huge difference, on all technologies available today:

    https://www.bufferbloat.net/pr... [bufferbloat.net]

    See also the bufferbloat mailing lists.

    1) if we want true neutrality, restrictive rules by the ISPs regarding their customers hosting services of their own have to go - and nobody's been making THAT point, which irks me significantly. In an age where you have, say, gbit fiber to your business, it makes quite a lot of sense from a security

    • I've read that and its total hosrseshit written by a guy that knows nothing of how enterprise networking operates. I know he's saying stuff that you want to believe is true and accurate but the fact of the matter is, he doesn't even know what the real problem is!

      Netflix IS a real problem. Something needs to be done, but Netflix has successfully turned this into a "Net Neutrality" debate... and unfortunately for us all, LOST. There are a dozen different ways of fixing the Netflix problem... most of which wou

      • its total hosrseshit written by a guy that knows nothing of how enterprise networking operates.

        heh - the guy is one of the leading experts on computer networking. I notice you don't even have a link to your CV on your user page. Wanna be specific?

        They could change their business model tomorrow to one that wasn't crushing the ISP's infrastructure but they have time and again refused to do so.

        You mean like offering settlement-free peering and free content caches to ISP's?

        https://www.netflix.c [netflix.com]

        • I see you're falling for netflix's marketing.

          Look at their rules governing use of those peers. You can't use them to deliver content outside of their immediate geographical area. Which are only in major cities (NewYork, Chicago, etc...) which are not where congestion problems are. Congestion problems are in rural Tennessee... Kansas, etc...

          On top of that, the majority of the problem is NOT at the peer. Where the ISPs are really getting screwed is in the last mile. Upgrading that is insanely expensive. We're

          • . If you've got 50 people paying $30/month are you going to spend millions of dollars to upgrade that device? No, of course not. But that doesn't matter, most people don't all get on the internet all at the same time and pegging their bandwidth... and along comes Netflix...

            So, customers are using much more of the service, increasing costs, and you don't want to charge them for what they're using? That seems like the problem right there. I'd love for my electric company to give me all the power I can use f

        • Wait, do you work for Verizon?

          I missed this question. Sorry!
          No!
          But I do work for a large(ish) ISP.
          Never for Verizon, but I did apply once. They offered me a job, but their HR department was so incredibly inept I turned them down. I interviewed with 100 other people in some kind of crazy game show style test interview thing. Most insane noensense I've ever been through in an interview... that was a LONG Time ago though.

          I'll not reveal my current employer but I doubt you'd have heard of them. I did work for AT&T about 10yrs ago. That'

      • I agree with some of the earlier post that net neutrality is not well understood by the public, or the legislators. But it's not the whole picture. There's a gut-level understanding of net neutrality that people like but have difficulty expressing.

        To me, the fundamental issue is that company X, when it is operating as a network provider, can not favor its own services and media or that of its friends in preference to company Y's services and media. That is Comcast should never make Netflix (or Hulu, or Y

        • That is Comcast should never make Netflix (or Hulu, or Youtube, or AT&T U-verse media) have lower performance than other equivalent services from Comcast (except of course in cases where the Comcast media is stored relatively local and thus can be provided more efficiently for technical reasons).

          The problem with that is that Comcast's "equivalent service" (On-Demand) uses technically different delivery mechanisms than Netflix service. On Demand appears as a regular cable channel to the end user. In fact, until a few months ago, Comcast in this area delivered it as an unencrypted channel, and anyone with an ATV with clearQAM could view it. This was after they changed to encrypting all but a very few cable channels.

          So, that's why a clogged pipe to Netflix wasn't also a clogged pipe to On Demand. An

        • I agree with some of the earlier post that net neutrality is not well understood by the public, or the legislators. But it's not the whole picture. There's a gut-level understanding of net neutrality that people like but have difficulty expressing.

          To me, the fundamental issue is that company X, when it is operating as a network provider, can not favor its own services and media or that of its friends in preference to company Y's services and media. That is Comcast should never make Netflix (or Hulu, or Youtube, or AT&T U-verse media) have lower performance than other equivalent services from Comcast (except of course in cases where the Comcast media is stored relatively local and thus can be provided more efficiently for technical reasons). So an internet service provider side of the business must be kept independent of the rest of the business, or else be split off.

          On the other hand, Comcast should not be required to provide all traffic for no cost. If some new company or paradigm comes along that doubles their bandwidth then the cost shouldn't be born by Comcast, but by the new providers AND by the customers who want that bandwidth. A problem here is the single price model that is not really charging end users for what they're actually using but which was naively assuming every user has similar usage patterns (there are multiple prices of course but they are usually based on speed and not quantity of data).

          You're right, as far as I'm concerned net neutrality should be a given. The problem is, the netflix issue doesn't have to be about that. There are other ways to solve that problem but Netflix has steered the argument into a corner. Fix NETFLIX, don't torpedo the internet to do it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )

        wrong.
        Netflix pays for their bandwidth. I pay for mine. Now Verizon, AT&T and others want to get paid a third time.

        " Netflix doesn't give a damned about Net Neutrality,"
        And AT&T, doesn't? Verizon? Google?

        "they care about money"
        well dur. But both of those aren't opposite.
        You notice companies that will make money either way are still jumping in and saying AT&T and verizon is wrong?

        " They could change their business model tomorrow to one that wasn't crushing the ISP's infrastructure "
        it' snot, and

        • wrong.
          Netflix pays for their bandwidth. I pay for mine. Now Verizon, AT&T and others want to get paid a third time.

          Well, so this is hard to answer... Of course they want to get paid 2 or 3 or 4 times for the same product. They are greedy companies.
          But they didn't go out and try to do that. Netlfix refused to deliver their content in a responsible manner. They tried a few different ways to make Netflixes poor business practices "cost" netflix money... Netflix fought and won... then they tried charging for peering... and it stuck. Then the ISPs thought... hey, this is a new business model! I, personally, fully support ne

    • Wrong (Score:4, Interesting)

      by bussdriver ( 620565 ) on Monday July 14, 2014 @05:03PM (#47451271)

      Like most every political issue in the dysfunctional USA discourse, we have multiple off topic debates created as distractions from the real issues. Some of it promoted intentionally. I wouldn't expect comcast to stop at merely paying bums off the street to fill up public comment time at the FCC (as they have done, proving they have no respect for democracy.)

      This is not about technical packet routing but the policies beyond the technical issues. Comcast purposely screwing up NetFlix in order to make them pay and then pass that onto their customers as a Comcast tax. You pay for bandwidth, NetFlix pays for bandwidth. If both of you use the full amount of bandwidth you are promised and PAY FOR and the ISPs can't deliver on their marketed promises... then that is a legal issue for the ISPs making the false claims.

      This is also an issue of corporations playing favoritism with those packets. It doesn't matter if your car is broken down into atoms and sent in one big data flow -- when the corporation IDs all the atoms for your car and does not like your destination then slows down only your atoms... it doesn't matter what technical router issues they can dream up as an excuse for intentional discrimination which is not based upon neutral technical issues (like SIP needing priority.) That is smokescreen for their real agenda... to turn internet into cable TV.

    • Along those same lines my second grader's report on the civil war was just fucking garbage. I mean, it barely mentioned the manifold reasons behind the civil war. It focused on slavery and BARELY hinted at federalism at all, or the cultural divide. It was only one page long too!

      In seriousness, the point of a metaphor in politics is to dumb something down to a point where people who are ignorant on the issue can be motivated to act in a certain way. "Ignorant" here including myself, I don't really u

    • QoS and traffic management can help you cope with a bottleneck and still get some important traffic through. But it can only work by choosing which traffic to drop. Who should decide what traffic is most important? What if your customers start using a new high bandwidth service? Why do you get to decide that this traffic is unimportant and should be dropped?

      There is only one equitable solution to this problem. Upgrade the network so that the choke point no longer exists and no traffic needs to be dropped a

  • The devil you know vs the devil you don't. Both sides are the devil and we know them equally well, the Government and the Corporations
  • I most definitely left a comment and I would do it again, but at the same time my pessimistic side wonders how much weight our comments carry compared to the opinions of the FCC commissioners' golf buddies from the ISPs.

  • Took me several attempts to finally get my comment submitted and I still can't verify the filing status..... i hope all of you are givin' 'em hell.....
    Tell me if i need to amend/edit my comment...

    begin"
    This quote from consumerist.com expresses my view fairly well....
    "There was a time, not very long ago, that Internet access was viewed as a luxury. The same was once true for running water, sewage, heat, electricity, and telephone landline service. But as use of each of these services evolved into essential u

  • I am unable to post because the website will not load. I have tried several times this morning. Is anyone else having trouble?
  • The FCC extended the comment deadline, allowing comments to be filed until midnight Friday, July 18. https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_pub... [fcc.gov] (Needless to say, this will result in a thrash about whether that's the midnight at the beginning or the end of Friday, July 18.)

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