[reitanqild]

IMO, IANAL

> -> meaning that a court order can change Net Neutrality, hmmm ok.

It would be weird for a court to order anyone to break net neutrality.

> -> meaning that in order to guarantee the security of the network Net Neutrality may be avoided. I'm so-so on this one.

The intention here seems to be to allow (D)DOS attack mitigation etc.

> -> Meaning that ISPs can throttle specific categories of traffic at their own will.

Note that the law is very clear that this only is allowed "provided that equivalent categories of traffic are treated equally."

[komali2]

"Comcast video streaming service is not in the same category as Netflix, Hulu because...."

Back to square 1.

[WilliamDhalgren]

Nope; that would simply be challenged in court.

[lugg]

Really, who is going to challenge the difference between Netflix and torrents.

Both video. Both serve the end user in the same way.

But nobody will challenge it because nobody is in charge of torrents.

This kills neutrality completely. There is no way those ruling over this know where to draw the category lines properly.

[WilliamDhalgren]

Well for one, torrent's not a video format. Let alone a streaming video service.

And anyhow, FCC did exactly that; they went after Comcast for throttling torrents for no reason. And throttling torrents just because they're torrents is clearly not permissable by this clause by BEREC either; all it allows for is temporary and exceptional traffic shaping in case of congestion, provided it's done nondiscriminatorily. Which is a good thing; an ISP needs to have a neutral course of action available then besides a meltdown of its net. And yeah, I'd say latency insensitive bulk downloads would be perfectly sensible to deprioritize then. Now, doing what's reserved for recovery in general instead is certainly an abuse of network neutrality, by this rulebook as by FCCs.

[lugg]

That sounds fine, until you realise there is always congestion at prime time.

Suddenly, you've got throttling allowed against one person's service and not another, because "categories".

This is not neutral.

[WilliamDhalgren]

prime-time congestion is hardly exceptional then, so that shouldn't qualify.

[wiz21c]

torrents are more general than netflix, so it's not the same category

[lugg]

That's exactly my point though.

It's not the same category, but it IS a competing service playing on an unfair playing field.

Leveling the playing field for people playing the same game is all fine and dandy, but it completely fucks over disruptive innovations challenging the status quo in a different category.

How about this one, people watch less TV than they did ten years ago, a lot of that time is now spent using Facebook, what happens when Facebook isn't throttled but Netflix and the rest in their category are?

This isn't net neutrality in the slightest.

[j2ko4r]

> It's not the same category, but it IS a competing service playing on an unfair playing field.

It really isn't. Netflix isn't a protocol, and if you're using torrents as a drop in replacement for Netflix you're breaking copyright law in any case. You can't argue that you use torrents as a competing service without implying you're breaking the law.

[Spivak]

However, choosing to throttle video content in general to promote their cable service would probably be allowed under this ruling. I don't know if that possibility is serious enough to worry about though.

[WilliamDhalgren]

I wonder even about that, given that it's stated that it can be done only under exceptional and temporary conditions of congestion. The regulator should probably act if it were the general practice instead.

But yeah, the public will need to stay vigilant over how national regulators implement this ruling case by case.

[calgoo]

From my understanding it looks more like: "We are streaming the Olympics and its transferring 2TB/s of data, we need to route this differently!". But then again, loopholes are loopholes, and it will be just a matter of time until it will be abused.

[WilliamDhalgren]

Sry, could you clarify, what looks more like rerouting a large download?? Anyhow, allowing traffic shaping in congestion control is not a network neutrality loophole in itself, but ofc any regulation depends on the regulator.

[soci]

> Note that the law is very clear that this only is allowed "provided that equivalent categories of traffic are treated equally."

They can, for instance, slow down P2P traffic. What do you think about that?

[WilliamDhalgren]

comcast could in the US, and won in court. Despite US regulation being seen as quite robust.

By this text, they'd need to show it was an exceptional and temporary necessity to deal with congestion.

[rhino369]

If you are talking about the case from 5ish years ago, that was because the court struck down the entire basis for net neutrality. The net neutrality rules themselves didn't allow for blocking p2p.

[WilliamDhalgren]

yeah, that's the case. Could you clarify? I'm just seeing old articles claiming the last court verdict on the matter was that the FCC overstepped its authority in that particular case? Did some case or law change this? But yeah, hard to see how discriminating a particular protocol w/o cause could be network neutral.

[rhino369]

Sure. There was a new FCC ruling that based it's decision on a much more legally sound law.

The FCC is allowed to regulate telecommunication services strictly. Right now it takes a sort of a hands off approach, but they have broad authority to make rules. Before 2015, the FCC considered ISPs to be "information services" instead of "telecommunication services." So the first time the FCC proposed net neutrality rules, it tried to apply them under the "information services" framework.

The Court in 2010 (I think) found that the FCC didn't have the power to regulate "information services" so harshly. So the court canceled their net neutrality rules.

So last year the FCC reclassified ISPs as telecommunication services. Since they are allowed to harshly regulate those services, it's considered very likely to upheld by the court this time.

The only chance it gets struck down is if the court thinks the FCC was clearly wrong about ISPs being a telecommunication service. But the law is pretty clear that are. But I think some ISPs are still fighting it.

[Custodia]

That sounds like a horrible thing now that there is movement towards distributed systems like the block chain.

I think there should be some regulation that guarantees provider competition so that consumers could take their stand on issues like this.