Landmark US net neutrality decision reveals that both sides won and lost out The Washington DC appeals court has upheld the decision by federal regulator FCC to reverse net neutrality rules but said it does not have the right to stop US states from adopting their own rules. The mixed decision [PDF], released on Tuesday morning, has provoked a familiar response, with both sides claiming victory while …
It's a necessary condition, not necessarily a sufficient one, but the previous iteration of the FCC was more consumer-friendly, and the current crop of Democratic presidential candidates are certainly giving lip service to being less beholden to corporate interests (which means to some quarters that they are a bunch of Commie-loving soshulists, but what can you do).
"Get money out of politics," - "wolf-pac' - a non-partisan group https://wolf-pac.com
Other organisations: https://wolf-pac.com/about/unity/
"The only body that can actually fix this is Congress, not the White House, no matter who the president is."
WRONG! There are at least FIFTY bodies that can fix this a piece at a time, they're called State Governments. And that's just what's happening.
It's been too easy for too long to lobby only Federal hacks, with D.C. being the One-Stop Friendly Law Shop. Now that those federal offices have so obviously failed in their purpose, the local governments are asserting their power. Which is why the Telcos and others are freaking out... it's much harder to buy votes and influence in fifty fractious states. Local governments are a lot more responsive to their constituents than far-off Federal politicos and agencies.
Fixing it state-by-state is better than doing nothing, but it isn't really fixing anything. The internet crosses state lines, after all. In order for the states to really fix it, they'd all have to get together and coordinate their legislation -- which is the entire purpose of the existence of Congress.
And many of the states benefit from the current arrangements at the expense of their constituents. Unless they are forced to change, they won't.
The benefits range from money paid to politicians campaigns through to sweetheart deals for the cable/telcom's companies but the result is the same - next to no consumer choice in many areas.
"WRONG! There are at least FIFTY bodies that can fix this a piece at a time, they're called State Governments. And that's just what's happening."
You mean the bodies responsible for actually implementing some of the stupid agreements that have resulted in the dominance of cable and telco's in many parts of the US?
While it is possible, it's about as likely to happen across all the relevant states in our lifetimes as pigs replacing aeroplanes to combat climate change.
Congress on the other hand can pass laws to increase competition in the cable/telco markets to the point where the existing agreements are no longer applicable in a matter of a year or two depending on how much money is spent on lobbying for delays.
"None of this will be corrected until the WH administration is gone and Pai is fired."
*FACEPALM*
You mean, none of this will be corrected until we have CONSERVATIVE MAJORITIES in BOTH houses and Trump is in his 2nd term...
Truly there are more important things than THIS. "Net Neutrality" isn't what it claims to be, in the same way Socialism isn't "fairness" or "social justice" nor does it lift up the status of those on the bottom [it actually LOWERS the standards of everyone ABOVE the bottom].
But until November of 2020, and possibly beyond, the Demo[n,c][R,r]ats will be busy playing the "Impeach" shell game, and getting absolutely NOTHING done... well, that's not always BAD, if nothing gets done, but it certainly wont clarify the FCCs authority and issues regarding states and communications and internet and stuff like that.
In a way it's like a weird compromise, what the judge did. Con-Grab needs to finish the job and do it RIGHT this time.
And this is the same person who has declared the US has wide-spread broadband internet because ONE (1) household in 1000 sq miles has some sort of internet (usually DSL) - ergo "everyone" has broadband.
This link displays Miami-Dade. FL.. https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/#/area-summary?version=jun2018&type=county&geoid=12086&tech=acfosw&speed=25_3&vlat=25.55916672792003&vlon=-80.45817700000003&vzoom=8.319271028791471 Look at the Miccosukee Indian Village map - tell me that area has uniform internet access ≥ 25/3 Mbps !!??
John Oliver FCC II segment is fun to watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vuuZt7wak - go to 7:39 and see the "mug" he uses!!!
I really wish that the critical parts of the Internet that are under the heel of the US government and corporations could be decentralized or moved under an entity like the ITU (not specifically them, just a for-instance). Some private organization in the US controlling the DNS system, IP allocations and AS numbers makes me really nervous. At least its not the Department of Commerce, but that's like saying that getting kicked in the ribs is better than getting kicked in the face... The US government still has the power to declare "National Security", seize IANA / ICANN, and force a shut down, or manipulation, of key parts of the Internet.
I wouldn't mind the US destroying their own chunk of the internet if it didn't also affect the other 7.2 billion people that live on this planet.
In practice, that couldn't happen. If the U.S. government decided for some reason to take control of IANA and reallocate all the IPV4 addresses to point to different places, let's look at what would happen. First, we would start with the question of why they'd do something like that. There isn't any conceivable benefit to messing with IP addresses because it would break lots of stuff. But we're assuming that they do so anyway. Immediately, the regional NICs would complain. Their word would be considered strongly by traditional IANA personnel, but we'll assume that the U.S. government has replaced all those people with people who don't care. Even in that case, the remaining NICs would probably immediately decide not to honor the new routing rules, and stick to the former system. The only country outside the U.S. that would be affected would be Canada, and I think their diplomats would have something to say about it.
There were stories of politicians saying that ICANN specifically should be made a group under the authority of the federal government. However, it was clear that they had no idea what ICANN did or any intention to change its operations. Instead, they merely heard a news story about the group gaining some independence and freaked out. Expecting technical knowledge from a politician is doomed to failure.
Another system you mentioned could be at risk is DNS. Here, however, you have little cause for concern. DNS is decentralized, at least enough that no national government can mandate changes. Many providers of root servers are based in America, but many others are not. Nearly every country TLD is administered in that country, excepting only the small countries who choose to outsource their domains for sale. The only thing that could happen is that someone in an international ISP would have to change the root server used by their DNS resolver. In addition, even the American DNS providers are private companies and cannot simply be told what to do without new legislation being passed.
My concern isn't that they'd do something that dramatic, but rather make unnoticeable changes to the root zone or manipulate AS number assignments so that traffic that wouldn't normally pass through the US does so now where the NSA can spy on it.
"In addition, even the American DNS providers are private companies and cannot simply be told what to do without new legislation being passed."
I've known far too many companies in the US that have been ready to do the bidding of whoever is in charge. Time and time again, commercial products are found with backdoors and weaknesses that were inserted at the request of the NSA, no legislation required. OR the government can get them to do something by bribing a company with juicy contracts or threatening to take some away. Or threatening to have some agency or another investigate the company or its officers.
Verisign make tens of millions of dollars a year from the US government for various security products, and to host the .com and .net zones. Their executive, like all US executive, are going to being stashing their money away using questionably legal practices to avoid taxes. Verisign also employs a lot of employees, at least one would be suspicious enough that some law enforcement agency or another could get a warrant to start seizing anything that employee touched (EG, 'we think employee 'x' downloaded child abuse videos using the company network, the FBI will be by shortly to grab your file servers while they investigate'. We could convince the FBI to back down a bit if you make these changes...")
As for DNS, you don't need to control every root server, just one or two are more than sufficient to carry out a widespread cache poisoning attack. Especially if you set the TTL to a large enough value that eventually all servers querying a root server eventually get the incorrect result. I'm thinking something like the US replacing the NS records for .cn to point to a server in the US. The attack could go unnoticed for a long time if their servers respond with mostly legitimate data.
"I've known far too many companies in the US that have been ready to do the bidding of whoever is in charge."
This.
The independence of business in the US is often cited, and equally often overstated. As near as I can see, the US isn't much different than other nations in this regard.
That has nothing to do with US "net neutrality" rules, that's for US telco and US customers. The backbone links managed by the higher tier carriers manage traffic in a different way, they won't throttle end users.
IP and AS allocations are not controlled by US entities only, RIPE, APNIC, ecc. manage their own allocations. Root DNS server are also distributed outside US.
It is true US could still create havoc in a large part of the Internet - but it would destroy a large part of its internet industry with it.
My concern doesn't have so much to do with Net Neutrality per se as much as my general distaste over how much of the Internet depends on stuff that exists within the US.
In this day and age, it has become impossible for me to do anything on the internet without at least some of my packets ending up on US soil despite that country having nothing to do with what I am doing. Even when I communicate to someone in my own country, at least one DNS query gets answered by a machine in the US. A query that the US has the capability to poison if they so wished.
In regards to Net Neutrality, my concern is over the debate whether ISPs are allowed to do deeper analysis of packets beyond reading the headers so they can send the packet on its way. I remember the NN conversation including such provisions a few years ago, but the question was never fully resolved. I would very much prefer not to have my sessions tracked and cataloged by some US corporation solely because my packets crossed their wires.
Yet another issue that is being used to divide the USA along partisan lines. It is unlikely to ever be solved at a federal level because the politicians are too busy using it as a 'we're right, you're wrong' talking point, which leaves almost no option for well-considered compromise.
Honestly, a country that can't really get laws through without having a majority in all of government to force them through has a massive issue in their politics. Politicians, and government, should be there to represent their people and find the best compromise for each issue. Unfortunately, there seems to be a real lack of politicians of a calibre enough to look beyond their own personal interest, party lines or corporate backers, and work out what is best for their country.
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