U.S. regulators ditch net neutrality rules as legal battles loom (reuters.com).
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted along party lines on Thursday to repeal landmark 2015 rules aimed at ensuring a free and open internet, setting up a court fight over a move that could recast the digital landscape.
How? Well as a “marked a victory for internet service providers such as AT&T Inc, Comcast Corp and Verizon Communications Inc” et al. it could be bringing back the days some may remember of throttled content and steerage towards services they would prefer you to use.
Internet service providers say they will not block or throttle legal content but may engage in paid prioritization. They argue that the largely unregulated internet functioned well in the two decades before the 2015 order.
It did, but things have changed and a lot of that change is bandwidth heavy box set binge streaming:
Here’s what getting rid of net neutrality will do to Netflix (dailycaller.com).
“Several experts told TheDCNF that Netflix prices will not go up, and like Rinehart asserted, if they do, it’s not because of the rule change.”
So why so much talk about it? Who was net neutrality really protecting—or just giving market advantage to?
“The 2015 rules were designed to protect Google and Facebook from competition from ISP platforms for Internet ad sales; this action makes that market more competitive, in recent months, Google and Facebook have sold 100% of the Internet’s new ads, and that’s not a desirable situation.”
Hmm; that does seem like some had used their massive search and social traffic to their ad-profiteering advantage, but seriously, are ISP’s—the virtual bogymen of old—going to more or less “neutral?” So, who’s in most danger?
“The real danger is for the future competitors of Netflix because they will not have the disposable cash on hand to compete in a pay to win structure the FCC endorsed,” [Ernesto Falcon, legislative counsel at the nonprofit digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation] told TheDCNF. “[Eventually], the real fight will be what ISPs expect to extract in terms of rents from these companies with their market power.”
Ah, so sorta like virtual tollbooths now no longer having to act as “common carriers” as they were under the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) meaning that they couldn’t favour particular communications over others.
He isn’t so much worried about more ‘established firms’ like Google, Facebook, and Netflix altering their respective platforms or pricing, but rather that they ‘will be lured into striking exclusive priority deals with ISPs’ cementing dominance in the process.
So, you may have to pay more, or just can’t get your streaming service of choice if you are not with the ISP that has an “exclusive priority deal”?
The truth is, no one knows… yet.
But that’s on the other side of the Atlantic pond… what about us Brits, or those fiddling with their Euros in Europe?
Net neutrality: What a US vote means for the UK (news.sky.com).
The net neutrality principle is active in British law courtesy of the European Union’s Regulation on Open Internet Access, although the UK already had a voluntary system before this.
So no, barring some comical Brexit debacle made by middle aged and old chaps desperate to regain their sovereignty in whatever midlife or old colonial crisis they are in “the Government plans to convert EU net neutrality rules along with much of the rest of EU law into British law using the Great Repeal Bill.”
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