FCC Repealed Net Neutrality By A 3-2 Vote

This isn't an MMA related topic, but it's relevant to the future of the site, so I thought why not.

In case any of the American users of Tapology have been living under a rock, the FCC has just confirmed that they are repealing the Title II regulations, which guaranteed that Internet Service Providers like Verizon and AT&T could not create internet fast lanes and preferential treatment to websites on the internet.  With those regulations gone, now the ISPs can essentially extort sites (and users) to get premium access to the web and if sites like this one can't afford it, they can throttle the speed down to a crawl; which means less web traffic to a site and ultimately can cause small websites to die.  Essentially, it allows the ISPs to turn the internet into Cable TV, which is ironic since Cable is dying as a distribution platform.

Now the FCC vote isn't the final blow, as Congress still has to approve it.  But under the presumption that it does, what does the future holds for Tapology should this go through?

I doubt much is going to change. The net neutrality rules everyone is ****ting themselves over were set into place in 2015, and the Internet wasn't a hellscape where everyone had to pay $100 per website in 2014.

@yasdas that's not an accurate recounting of history.  starting today is the first time that for real there is no net neutrality.

i don't expect to see much change in anything for a few years. but over time it could really start to suck.  hopefully this **** gets reversed.

polls show 83% of actual humans did not want this to happen. it's only because of the lobbying and money that verizon/comcast/etc poured into trying to get this done.

@Greg In a technical sense yasdas is right. They only removed the regulations applied in 2015; however, the reason those rules were put in place was because ISPs were becoming more bold in challenging the vagueness of the internet rules as had been previously enforced. The larger question still remaining is how does this mean the FCC will enforce regulation now? To me, it signals that they're not interested in blocking ISPs from demanding money from companies (not necessarily bad imo, as certain sites essentially hog all of the bandwidth) or charging ala carte for internet access (really terrible, seems to be a potential free speech issue, as well as essentially turning the internet into everything people hate about cable). It seems stupid that the FCC is going backwards on this as the only reason Title II was applied to ISPs is because they were specifically doing things that made regulation necessary. I'm all for not regulating things until/unless there is abuse that warrants regulation; however, this condition seems to have already been met, so I don't like the idea of going backwards in the regulation.

I wouldn't be so angry at the FCC for this if the ISPs weren't being so damn manipulative.  Because ultimately, government control over the internet is not good, but considering how the ISPs just want to take the internet and kill what made it great by making it the new cable it's become a case of pick your poison.

* Edited at 12.15.2017, 12:49 AM ET *

Did some research on the matter and changed my opinion.

I think the main issue here is is that ISPs have functional monopolies in many areas of the country. Most Americans only have 1 or 2 choices when choosing an ISP, and because they don't have much competition, they're able to exploit their customers as much as they want. I agree that net neutrality is very important for the future of the internet as a medium, and that it should be set into law instead of being subject to FCC regulations, but I don't think this issue will be resolved until the consumer is given more choices.

* Edited at 12.15.2017, 12:56 PM ET *

Here's how I could see this kind of thing unfolding.

Let's say in a few years Tapology wants to start doing live streaming or hosting videos of local MMA shows. (we're not actually planning this, but just hypothetically).

With today's internet we'd be treated no differently than any other site (Youtube, Netflix, Fight Pass). As long as our servers could handle the traffic, you could watch all the streaming fights you wanted from Tapology.

But now without net neutrality, Comcast could be like:

"Hey sports and entertainment fans, your regular internet plan is $50/month, but we're now offering the Sports Streaming Blastoff Package, giving you 8K HD boost power for over 200 of the most popular sports and entertainment services on the web, including UFC Fight Pass and WWE Network. All for just $19.99 more on top of the great plan you already have!"

Super. And guess what, Tapology, as a small company, is not one of the 200 services included in that package. When you go to watch events from Tapology, your download speed is capped at 20 megabytes per second. Now, maybe 20mbps used to be plenty, but let's say it's the year 2025 and everyone is watching everything on 8K HD screens.  And you legit need 100mbps download speeds in order to watch in 8K.

So now everything you stream from Tapology looks like ****, and everything you stream from Fight Pass looks awesome. And when Tapology goes and begs Comcast to include us in their boost power plan, they're like "Yeah to get into that tier it's $3 million in annual content delivery fees."

And then slowly but surely even if Tapology had better fights, better content, etc, MMA fans would start to only watch the MMA from the services that were in their Comcast plan.

Obviously it's hard to know exactly what will happen, but trust me, something conceptually like this is going to be our future.

* Edited at 12.15.2017, 3:43 PM ET *

What's also bad is that the UFC website will continue to work well and continue to stream their fights. But smaller promotions like Road FC, ACB, M-1 and more will not be able to stream their fights for free or maybe not at all. They will be forgotten if this whole thing gets really bad

@DontPunch

Well Road FC is on Youtube, as is M-1 and ACB (although ACB's english streams are on FITE) so there's that.  But then again, it's not like Youtube is doing any favors for independent content creators either with their whole YouTube TV ******** where they are trying to become internet TV and make deals with the dying cable dinosaurs of the past that are hanging on to keep relevant like CNN (the leader in fake news) and ESPN.

I feel like there is no winning with this ********.  Because either we have title II in place which keeps the internet "neutral", but creates a monopoly in favor of Silicon Valley that will self censor enemy companies and try and make things like youtube more like cable or it get dissolved and we allow the ISP's to section off parts of the internet, select the winners and losers based on bribes and have it become the new cable.  Like why can't these two groups leave the internet alone?  It's like no matter what, the internet is going to be changed to be more like cable.

* Edited at 12.15.2017, 11:34 PM ET *

@mikey

Not when it is for ideological reasons and will lead ultimately to the same results. IMO, all of these ******s from the telecom companies to the corporations that own silicon valley should be antitrust lawsuited into oblivion.

* Edited at 12.16.2017, 1:05 AM ET *

@mikey

Not really.  It gives too much free reign to the chunderbrains at silicon valley to censor, throttle, and bury search results as a means to a political end that they want to see.  Furthermore, I do not, under any circumstances, trust my government enough to keep the net neutral when that same provision also allows the government carte blanche to do anything they want with the information you put into google.  Ultimately, if I had to pick between two **** choices, it would be Title II because it still allows somewhat of a free market and open access to everything.  But again, that's like asking would you rather be shot or stabbed.  In reality, I would like Title II to be reworked so that it can be legitimate net neutrality that would leave the internet back to pre 2015 status. Not some half baked law masquerading as net neutrality that plays favorites to the likes of Zuckerberg, kills all competition, as well as gives Silicon Valley a license to censor.