The Video Game Industry Joins The Lawsuit To Save Net Neutrality
from the with-Mario's-help dept
The Electronic Software Association (ESA) has decided to take a break from making up piracy statistics to actually do something useful.
The group, which represents video game publishers ranging from EA to Nintendo, has filed a motion to intervene (pdf) in the looming case against the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality rules at the behest of consumers. Numerous consumer advocacy firms, several companies including Vimeo and Mozilla, and 23 State attorneys general have filed suit against the FCC, arguing it ignored the public interest, experts, and objective data when it rushed to kill popular net neutrality rules at the telecom industry’s behest.
In a statement posted to its website, the ESA states it felt the need to lend a hand to ensure that ISPs don’t use their last-mile monopolies to hamstring innovative and disruptive new games or gaming-related services:
“The internet drives innovation, fuels our 21st century economy, and helps create the jobs of tomorrow?especially for the connected world of interactive entertainment. Consumers deserve rules of the road that prevent blocking, throttling, and other restrictive conduct ? and enable the great online experiences that bring meaning and value to all parts of our country. ESA will make that case in the months ahead on behalf of America?s gamers and game makers.”
In the full filing, the ESA says its members are concerned that with no rules in place, ISPs may “take actions that could jeopardize the fast, reliable, and low latency connections that are critical to the video game industry.” In Canada, that manifested a few years back when Rogers decided to throttle all BitTorrent activity, hampering the then BitTorrent-based World of Warcraft upgrade client. As with every other sector, there’s valid worry that ISPs will strike paid prioritization or zero rating deals with the deepest-pocketed companies, putting smaller services and companies at a disadvantage.
The lawsuits against the FCC comes as more than half the states in the union have now proposed their own, state-level net neutrality protections. Large ISPs, meanwhile, have threatened to sue any state that dare try and protect consumer welfare. The lawsuits, which should fully kick off after the FCC finalizes publication of the repeal (expected late this month), should be chock full of insight into some notably bizarre behavior by the Trump FCC as it tripped over itself to pander to the telecom industry.
Filed Under: fcc, net neutrality, video games
Companies: esa, mozilla, vimeo
Comments on “The Video Game Industry Joins The Lawsuit To Save Net Neutrality”
I’m guessing games would be one of the things they would try their best not to mess with. Still, it’s good to see that good for almost nothing ESA doing something that helps. I do think this is some sort of slam dunk case and the FCC is going to lose badly but until we get there there’s much damage to be done.
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When their objective is to reverse the loss of cable subscribers, and they are used to customers hating them, why wouldn’t they try to get gamers to become cable subscribers by making the gaming experience more awful than most of their content?
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Not to mention make watching cable TV more attractive by making gaming less attractive.
I know I watch a lot less TV then I used to thanks to gaming.
Even when I do ‘watch’ TV it’s often when half my focus is on the computer, often gaming (it’s useful in between matches where you have to wait for the server to find you a suitable opponent).
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I have to disagree. Gamers are known for purchasing high end PCs and consoles for large sums of money to make sure they can play games at the fastest framerate possible (no diss, gamer here, can confirm). I am sure it would be extremely attractive to ISPs to throttle games, then offer a much more expensive “Gaming tier” internet offering that advertises to speed up your connection to game servers.
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Yeah. They are also an incredibly loud bunch so the strategy you are talking about could greatly backfire… Into them supporting NN.
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It could and I would hope that would be the outcome if ISPs decided and were allowed to do something like that.
However, gamers are still kind of looked down on (though that is beginning to change) and it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if, at first, the ISPs just said “well if you really think you need that kind of speed, you can pay for it”. I mean, that is essentially what Pai said when he advocated that 10 Mbps mobile data is a viable substitute for wired broadband. Good luck playing online games on that kind of connection. I would hope the backlash from that would be so bad they would backtrack quickly. The problem is, most games these days require an online connection, so gamers are stuck with the choice of either bowing to ISP pricing demands or not playing games at all.
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works for me! I wonder if it would bring back LAN parties, I wonder if it would cause people to start avoiding the internet shit hole because you can’t do anything reasonable with it without paying through the nose.
The internet may even devolve into an “only as necessary” utility.
But here is the kicker… everyone deserves it because they keep running to dirty and corrupt people to save them. As long as you keep doing that, you get what you get!
It’s the grand paradox… everyone is asking for “democracy” yet begging for government to regulate things. Well? which do you want? Regulation or Democracy? Cause they don’t go hand in hand folks!
If you can run a successful democracy, then the people are capable of properly boycotting a business into the dirt when they create or abuse a monopoly.
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Regulation and democracy are not mutually exclusive. It’s actually the opposite. We democratically elect people to represent us into regulating aspects of collective life.
And your comment on monopolies is pretty naive, almost toddler-like. Monopoly is the natural course of capitalism as the game with the same name tries to show but there are areas like some infra-structure (which includes telecommunications) that are natural monopolies due to the extremely high entry barrier (high capital expenditures to build the network). That’s where some regulations to prevent abusive behavior that rises from monopolies are imposed by said representatives to the best interests of the citizenry.
But you have been told it already and like a petulant child you keep sticking your fingers in your years and yelling “LALALA CAN’T HEAR YOU FROM THE TOP OF MY MARVELOUS KNOWLEDGE!”.
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You may hate the internet but the rest of the world does not. Nor are you correct in your assertions about its veracity or usefulness.
Do you truly understand what you are saying when you advocate for it being an “only as necessary” utility? Do you realize how far backwards society would go as a whole were that to happen? You have it backwards, the internet is absolutely a necessary utility for today and the future.
It enables real time communication anywhere, anytime. Researchers can share information in seconds instead of days, weeks, or years. This has helped advance technical, medical, physical, chemical, and many other areas of science and study in a fraction of the time it would have taken even 50 years ago.
Also, LAN parties aren’t dead, not by a longshot. If you think otherwise you have been living under a rock. There are LAN parties hosted all over the US that bring in hundreds if not thousands of players. And there are many smaller LANs that don’t get the same amount of attention but are very popular within their geographical area. Not to mention, nothing is stopping friends from getting together and once a month and connecting up in the same room. My friends and I still do this.
So you can keep your lawn, don’t worry we’ll stay off it, we don’t want it. Meanwhile the rest of us will be living vastly improved lives while you are stuck in the dark ages.
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If you rely on the Internet to reach your market, and stay in day to day contact with your peers in any small business field, an Internet boycott is business suicide. It is the same as saying live without using the roads, as the moniker digital highway is a good description of what ISPs should be providing.
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“Regulation or Democracy? Cause they don’t go hand in hand folks!”
Define “democracy”, and see how stupid that statement is.
But, what’s your alternative? Corporatocracy? Oligarchy?
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Oh God, now you’ve done it.
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Not every pc gamer can afford to run out and get the cutting edge technology. Some make do with the moderate spec machines. And ISP’s started rolling out data caps that can force gamers to choose between games or streaming services. Game publishers aren’t making as many single player games as they used to. They hitched their cart to multiplayer experience witb lootboxes as their cash cow. This has them running right into the ISP’s revenue streams, someone will have to blink first.
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True, and as you say, you can get buy with a moderate spec machine, but even moderate spec machines cost a few hundred dollars and consoles come in at a minimum of $300 – $400, plus add in all the games and that’s quite a chunk of change. To spend that much money on something means you really like it and are heavily invested into it. If you suddenly can’t play your games without paying for a higher speed internet tier, that’s going to be tough for a lot of gamers to just ditch online gaming altogether.
A few have mentioned it, but the AAA games industry is highly focused on ‘Live Services’ or “games as a service’ – aka online only, multiplayer-focused games that can use predatory micro-transactions for infinite profit potential. Focusing on the high end PC gamer market hurts them. They want a ton of players, as many as possible, because then they can wear players down, and turn them into payers.
Makes sense to me
There’s no way I’d be okay with Fortnite downloading weekly 1.5 GB patches, or downloading games which run around 30 GB, if I have a monthly cap I have to worry about running into. The game industry needs net neutrality, particular the prohibition of throttling and caps, in order for people to bother with electronic purchases and downloads. Expensive, slow, and metered connections may not kill mainstream gaming, but they’ll certainly maim it.
Re: Makes sense to me
Bandwidth caps have nothing to do with net neutrality. Net neutrality means treating all packets the same. You can do that and still impose a data cap.
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They run afoul of net neutrality when ISP’s don’t count their own content applicable to the cap.
Re: Oh, here's ANOTHER ZOMBIE! Zombie Master trying to wear me out!
“A Dan” or “danthestone” shows typical 18 month gap from Apr 11th, 2018 to Jul 14th, 2016; all of two in 2016, then back to 2013 first page; and when was just plain “Dan” at first comment on 3 Jun 2008 (!), 14 months to the second.
BUT this one does have 622 comments total! I guess may be “real”, esp since notes that ‘out_of_the_blue is correct on “whither”/”wither”‘…
On other hand, highly resembles Dark Helmet with “Planet Money’s podcast on the potential beer merger, it’s really interesting”, which only a severe alcoholic would remark.
But still no note was gone year and half! IF reading regularly of late, would surely have noticed my zombie reports and feel should mention; if NOT, surely would have noticed major reduction to Techdirt’s prior low quantity and quality. No sense of the obvious is inexplicable.
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But still no note was gone year and half
Like you, tard?
Re: Re: Oh, here's ANOTHER ZOMBIE! Zombie Master trying to wear me out!
Struggling to oppose any of the facts in these articles recently, huh? It must be a sad existence, obsessed with attacking every article but unable to disagree with anything actually said.
Re: Re: Re: Oh, here's ANOTHER ZOMBIE! Zombie Master trying to wear me out!
He’s just confused as to how one could possibly not be obsessed with Techdirt. Clearly Techdirt consumes his every waking thought, and fuels his nightmares, to the point where the idea that people might not define every facet of their lives in relation to Techdirt is utterly incomprehensible to him. He is obsessed, and thus assumes everyone else shares his obsession. That people have lives that continue outside of this site would never occur to him, he sees people only as aspects of the faceless conspiracy.
It’s kind of depressing, actually.
Re: Re: Re:2 Oh, here's ANOTHER ZOMBIE! Zombie Master trying to wear me out!
LOL! Imagine the seizure he’ll have if one of the members of staff gives me the login to my account; my email account for my old web design business lapsed so I can’t log in or use the “Reset password” option, which is why I post as an AC these days. It’s no biggie, I still get to post, after all. I’m only mentioning it as I try to imagine the snarl of consternation on Blue’s face if “(profile)” should show up beside my name one day.
Re: Re: Re:2 Oh, here's ANOTHER ZOMBIE! Zombie Master trying to wear me out!
I figure the necessary time to be classified as a "zombie" will continue to shrink.
"IT’S BEEN A WHOLE HOUR SINCE THIS USER LAST LOGGED IN!"
Re: Re: Oh, here's ANOTHER ZOMBIE! Zombie Master trying to wear me out!
Yes? And? Your point is? So he doesn’t comment on TD that often, what does that have to do with anything?
Since you post so frequently with nothing but posts full of BS, you must be a spam bot. Maybe I should start a spam report and comment on all your posts “proving” that you are nothing but a spam bot?
Title II advocates have gotten too arrogant
Everyone is for NN and Title II advocates have gotten too arrogant in believing their way is the only way. In the history of improper data discrimination in the US, there really only stands one big instance that all people consider improper and that is Madison River’s VOIP block which could be handled under new proposed rules.
Title II creates more regulatory uncertainty since what’s improper isn’t entirely agreed upon. I’ll be fine going back to Title II with the next admin but I still think the current proposed rules are better and should be tried and watched.
The communications industry creates noncompetitive and near monopoly conditions and rather than work at improving the problem I feel people tend to demonize the benefactors and this leads to strong bias of internet history that’s slanted and not real realistic.
Re: Title II advocates have gotten too arrogant
And in Europe that is dealt with by regulations that force the network owners to open their infrastructure to competitors. It is why living in a rural area I have a choice of ISPs over the same ISDN line, and have unlimited broadband that delivers 3 megabytes(not bits) despite being 3 miles from the roadside cabinet, and 20 from the ISP router.
Have you not noticed that in the US, the opposition to net neutrality has increased as cord cutting increased, and might just be due to ISP/cable companies realizing that the ISP side of their business is now impacting their cable business.
Re: Title II advocates have gotten too arrogant
More regulatory uncertainty than what? I doubt it creates more regulatory uncertainty than changing the rules every time there’s a new president.
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“I doubt it creates more regulatory uncertainty than changing the rules every time there’s a new president”
I agree somewhat, but that is because people I feel don’t understand the issue and think there is only one way to handle NN. Given the public’s overzealous self righteousness attitude, it may have been better just to have stuck with Title II. But I’m not going to criticize Pai for trying a way that I think handles NN better. We should always be experimenting with less regulated approaches because that is smart governing.
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Less regulation? Pai’s approach is effectively no regulation, as he is passing regulation over to an agency ill suited to the task.
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Pai’s way does not do anything to handle NN other than give a blank check to ISPs to do whatever they want with your connection.
His current proposed “rules” abdicate any responsibility or oversight of ISPs by the FCC. Basically it returns us, at best to the status quo since 2005 where ISPs could get away with a fair amount of shenanigans, at worst it takes it even farther and says “yeah do whatever you want, we don’t care and won’t interfere”.
How is that a solution?
Re: Title II advocates have gotten too arrogant
Then what is your problem?
Perhaps you need a history lesson? Comcast blocked P2P traffic, AT&T blocked any VoIP service other than theirs, Verizon blocked tethering, and there are more.
How? Because the proposed rules are no rules.
This is not true. It is currently the most expedient way to stop things from getting worse than they already are. TD and other supporters of NN have all publicly and multiple times stated the best way forward would be to have Congress enshrine strong NN rules in law and for either Congress or the FCC to pass local loop unbundling laws/regulation.
The problem is Congress is too far paid off to pass any NN rules worth anything, as evidenced by the garbage NN bills currently being considered. So, until we can get Congress convinced otherwise, the best way is to use Title II to behave until that happens. Saying that NN and T2 advocates think it is the only way shows a complete lack of ignorance regarding the whole thing.
No more so than not having any rules in place and I’d argue there’s less uncertainty. After all, how do you play a game without rules?
That is also not currently decided either and having no rules won’t change that.
If you are talking about Pai and/or ISPs then you really don’t get it. Lots of smart people have suggested lots of good ideas and Pai ignored every single one of them in favor of giving ISPs free reign to do whatever they want.
I would double check my history if I were you. As I pointed out above, you’ve got your history wrong yourself. And Pai has been caught lying and deliberately ignoring history himself. Facts and history are on the side of NN and Title II supporters. I would take a serious look back if I were you.
“Perhaps you need a history lesson? Comcast blocked P2P traffic, AT&T blocked any VoIP service other than theirs, Verizon blocked tethering, and there are more.”
Perhaps you need to understand the internet better. Comcast experimented with blocking P2P in select areas when their was concern it might cause congestion issues and that’s not something you wait till the last minute for. They only had a 10mbps upload pipe at the time and p2p was the biggest congestion hog then This is something many FCC heads would let go unimpeded.
AT&T did not block voip but convinced Apple to prevent the Skype app from being put on the phone due to congestion concerns with the tech at the time.
There are hotspot TOS agreements currently under Title II which allows this practice, so I don’t even know why you brought it up.
Like I stated. People don’t understand the issue.
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As congestion is demand based, and needs some method of sharing the available bandwidth equitably, and P2P is a protocol which has little to do with when the demand is greatest. If P”P is being blocked, people will find some alternate of getting their entertainment, so blocking it will do little or nothing to solve congestion.
Preventing the use of VOIP, by whatever means by on mobile phones is definitely an attack on a competing service. Again, it is a protocol ban being used under the guise of dealing with a time based problem.
So please explain in detail how blocking protocols changes the times at which some users use the service so that the load is more evenly distributed in time.
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No, that would be you. P2P is commonly used on the internet for many things and is an application level protocol. This is the equivalent of Comcast blocking facebook, google, World of Warcraft, or Microsoft on their networks. This is also EXACTLY why we need net neutrality.
Blocking applications as an ISP to manage your network congestion is a HORRIBLE way to do network management. It arbitrarily decides what your users can and can’t do on the net. In a business that works because you only want people to be using the net for business related purposes, but a home user may have purchased internet access JUST for that specific application you’re blocking. That’s anti-consumer, anti-open and free internet.
If true, that’s still no excuse. There are much better management techniques, such as Quality-of-Service. Also, at the time, P2P accounted for, at most, 25% of all internet traffic. I’d hardly call that a problem, not when video streaming was on the rise and consumes SIGNIFICANTLY greater bandwidth.
I seriously doubt that since the FCC SLAMMED Comcast for blocking P2P after it was discovered.
Which is essentially blocking VoIP. Also, there was no good reason for this and there were better ways to manage it.
What are you on about? What agreements are you talking about and what practice is allowed? Because as far as I’m aware, Title II rules say "NO blocking, NO throttling, and NO paid prioritization, with some exceptions for REASONABLE network management". In no way shape or form does blocking VoIP count as reasonable. That is unreasonable and Comcast and other ISPs have been, rightly, slapped around for it by the public and the FCC.
That much is obvious since you clearly do not.
You guys are clueless if you think ISPs should be penalized for experimenting dealing with congestion issues. Arm chair quarter backs thinks the ISPs were just doing it because they were evil. You guys have gotten your news for too long from people that tell one side of the story.
You all are too hardheaded and think you know better than the network managers and that is why we don’t need govt Arm-chair quarterbacks telling them what they can do.
Luckily Wheeler was smarter than you guys because he allowed experimentation of throttling under Title II so cellular networks could ease concerns that they had of meeting unlimited data demands.
^ Exhibit A & B of why we don’t want people that don’t understand the issue telling them what they can’t do. Pai’s way takes care of obvious issues but leaves the laymen out of network management decisions.
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“You guys are clueless if you think ISPs should be penalized for experimenting dealing with congestion issues.”
What about when they’re penalised for obviously not doing that and instead leveraging defacto monopoly power to drive people away from competitors on their content and other interests. Doing so under the pretence of “dealing with congestion” to fool the naive, of course, as the whole NN argument depends on people like yourself defending the corporations who are trying to screw you. Many other countries manage to control their networks without having to resort to these tactics, but they do have effective competition, and usually higher bandwidth due to better infrastructure investment.
You start from the assumption that nobody on here has worked or currently works on the tech side. You are wrong. Your argument fails very quickly from that point.
But, I do love it when some arrogant asshole spends 4 paragraphs attacking others for perceived inexperience, but neither establishes his own credentials nor details where the people he’s attacking are actually wrong.
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Network manager here. You have no idea what you’re talking about and are in fact, yourself, an arm chair quarterback.
You are actually the one who doesn’t understand the issue. Perhaps you should go educate yourself on how networks operate, TCP/IP protocol, the OSI model, and common network management techniques to mitigate congestion, such as QoS, then come back and tell us what you think.
Please also explain all the comments submitted by network managers to the FCC in SUPPORT of Title II.
I know that my ISP hates me because I barely watch TV and watch lots of youtube and Netflix. The only reasons I have TV are because I have kids and Comcast (in my region) forces me to have TV in order to get internet.