Reason: How To Break the Internet (in a Bad Way) 489
Widespread public sentiment favors the FCC's move to impose rules intended to establish "net neutrality"; an anonymous reader writes with a skeptical viewpoint: "No decent person," write Geoffrey Manne and Ben Sperry in a special issue of Reason, "should be *for* net neutrality." Across the board, the authors write, letting the FCC dictate ISP business practices will result in everything they say they're trying to avoid. For instance, one of the best ways to route around a big firm's brand recognition is to buy special treatment in the form of promotions, product placement and the like (payola, after all, is how rock and roll circumvented major label contempt for the genre). That will almost certainly be forbidden under the FCC's version of neutrality.
Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
Reason(tm) is the reason I do not call myself a libertarian.
"Reason" is a publisher of nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
bad writers paid by bad people to promulgate bad policies to screw almost everybody. that is the billionnaires trying to take back the plantations from the 99%.
if you read that fishwrap, do exactly the opposite.
Re:"Reason" is a publisher of nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
I did read the quote in the article and couldn't make sense of their reasoning.
Maybe it helps to smoke something.
Re:"Reason" is a publisher of nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Break the internet? Oh that's easy, just put a dysfunctional government in charge of it. Now let me see where to find one of those... or rather, where could one not find one today?
Re:"Reason" is a publisher of nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
the remaining rules still impose on ISPs the fundamental attributes of traditional common-carrier regulation.
The fundamental attributes of traditional common-carrier regulation include not holding the carrier responsible for the content of the messages. ISPs already benefit from that. Once they start prioritising certain traffic for commercial profit, aren't they kind of responsible for the traffic...?
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Interesting)
This is one of the areas Reason (and quite a few libertarians to boot) have shot themselves in the foot.
They don't cite specific instances of where Title II will bring about the doomsday scenarios they paint, and instead engage in FUD over any regulation (which, contrary to popular claim, libertarians should be for as long as they are sensible and fair and needed).
Instead of railing against the corporate welfare telecos have gotten or that they have gotten immunity for illegal wiretapping, they planted their flag here, which apparently works for this illiterate brand of libertarianism, and have completely omitted the question that brought this about in the first place: customers not receiving their advertized bandwith.
I mean, they open with a quote from Hayek. Except Hayek was also a proponent of basic income and land value taxes.
Imagine Reason discussing that other aspect of libertarian thought.
Not bloody likely.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:4, Interesting)
FUD is all the Libertarians have. History shows their ideals wrong every time they are tried.
Like any idealism, the ideal is a pure form. Nothing survives first contact with humanity. Our inherent greed, selfishness, and lazyness will corrupt it.
Socialism looks like a utopia on the surface. In reality the lazy people do only as much as they absolutely have to and take all they can get in return. The greedy rise to the top and siphon off the lion's share for themselves.
Capitalism looks like a great economic option. but again, the lazy sink to the bottom and drag down the economy while the greedy hoard all the resources while trying to get the high score on their bank accounts.
Libertarianism looks like a great way for selfish people to kill off the poor and handicapped. But in reality the poor and handicapped are reluctant to be killed off.
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"Socialism looks like a utopia on the surface. In reality the lazy people do only as much as they absolutely have to and take all they can get in return."
s/lazy people/corporations/g
Done for you.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
Like any idealism, the ideal is a pure form. Nothing survives first contact with humanity. Our inherent greed, selfishness, and lazyness will corrupt it.
Which is pretty much why I'm only willing to call myself 'libertarian leaning', not a full-up member of the party that agrees with the entire platform.
As quint mentioned, I DO rail against the corporate welfare, the exclusive monopolistic deals signed with various levels of governments, the states forbidding local governments from setting up networks to compete with the local cable/telephone company.
In my view internet service at this point is equivalent to a utility. My favorite form of utility is a cooperative. If the communication companies manage to piss off a a local government such as a city or township to the point that they're willing to vote for a bond initiative so set up their own ISP, then by golly they should be allowed to set up said ISP. It's a way to set up said cooperative utility.
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the states forbidding local governments from setting up networks to compete with the local cable/telephone company.
It depends on what you mean by compete.
1. If it means "set up a separate company that must be self sustaining and pay back any funds loaned to it by local government" then I would call that competing.
2. If it means "set up a department where any income shortfalls will be made up out of general revenue and all initial infrastructure expenditures will be paid for by local government" I would not call that competing.
How can any private company compete with a government organizations who is subsidized by taxes
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no problem with public owned ISPs. The issue is with public funding backed up by taxes competing with private funding requiring profit. If the universal coverage is funded by taxes then the private company is at a major disadvantage.
That is the reason local monopolies are given. The company is the only one in the area but they must provide universal coverage within that area at set prices.
Taxpayer-funded internet = bad, because competition = 0.
Local monopolies = good, despite competition = 0.
I hope you can see why I'm not really convinced that your logic is 100% consistent.
My view, for what it's worth, is that where monopoly is the only practical solution, that monopoly should not be an enterprise for private profit. Furthermore, the state/city-subsidised public utility company is a perfectly legitimate political decision for the public sector to take. Tax-payer owned infrastructure that is subsidised for vulnerable groups can be a public good, and there's no reason the subsidy for expensive-to-connect parts of the catchment area should be applied to the bills of people in the cheap-to-connect areas rather than general taxation. It's not like the budget for sidewalks is included as a special sales tax on shoes.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Informative)
Right -- the problem here is we have private companies that have a mandate for Universal Coverage, and receive tax-money to provide that Coverage, but then fail to live up to the mandate and instead cherry-pick easy spots to provide coverage while making record profits by pocketing the difference. Further, when they are called on this, they resist any attempt to rescind that monopoly and recover that tax money to put it towards actually filling in those gaps (i.e. a public utility) and providing the agreed upon coverage, and the state (likely in collusion with said companies) refuses to actually prosecute them for contract violations (so the existing legal remedies are not, in fact, working at all).
For example: New Jersey and NJ Bell (now NJ Verizon) - commitment to 100% broadband coverage (which specifically defines broadband as 45Mbps) by 2010, took the money, failed to even come close to compliance, posted hefty profit (so obviously not putting that money into infrastructure improvements to fulfill said contract), and a few years after the contract end-date got the goal post moved to allow 4G coverage and significantly slower capacity lines to count instead of being required to either pay back the monies taken or to fulfill the original deal.
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Ideally, it'd be the former, but I've seen initiatives where it's more like the latter. Like I said though, if it's a voter led initiative, then it's what they voted for.
Right now we're doing something very similar in setting up a natural gas distribution company in my town.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Interesting)
If fact it happens all the time. Government IS that bad at doing things. Their inefficiency _far_ exceeds private profit.
It actually often evens out though. The USAF ended up reversing a number of privatization initiatives because what savings were realized were done so by the company hiring the USAF trained maintainers, and the moment those started running out, costs skyrocketed way beyond what doing it in house used to cost.
You have to be careful, there are actually tasks the government is more efficient on, and that can include things like maintaining vehicles.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to see the Libertarian Party and Republican Party vision for America, look at H.O.A.s
What is there about governance, by an unregulated private corporation, under the guise of contract law, with no consumer protections, for a Tea Partyin' disciple of Ayn Rand and Ronald Reagan not to love?
@ColoradoHOA [twitter.com]
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:4, Insightful)
HOA's remind me more of Autocratic Dictatorships that put the word "Democratic" in their name.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:4, Interesting)
which is what you'd get with absolutely unregulated governance-by-contract set up by those who have the assets that everyone needs to live and won't let them borrow or even buy it from them without agreeing to such dictatorial terms.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
As a self-avowed Anarchist (from which Libertarianism descends), I disagree. Even though I know Anarchism as a general philosophy is completely incapable of viable application in any significant context.
The problem is ideologues. Political philosophies like libertarianism are useful. They distill specific, beneficial perspectives, often informed by historical experiences. They're schools that teach how to use a particular tool, or set of tools. For example, market capitalism, which despite the obvious problems has proven to be the best tool for increasing the _absolute_ wealth of everybody.
But anybody who let's their political philosophy dictate policy, divorced from pragmatism or other considerations, is just plain stupid.
I fully support net neutrality because we have plenty of evidence and experience that suggests we need it in this case. Reality should always trump ideology. Of course, maybe net neutrality will lead to a parade of horrible, unintended consequences. But, again, when we have substantial real-world evidence counseling a particular policy, that should trump almost every other consideration.
(Some people will shout, "slippery slope!" But that's an informal fallacy. I've never seen somebody argue slippery slope and back it up with the necessary points which could make it a proper argument.)
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think I've heard this before, that's kind of incredible.
Why was the United States so successful?
Why is Hong Kong so much more prosperous than mainland China?
Can you explain away the sudden increase in output of New Zealand and Switzerland?
Why is China implementing more private property protections and cheap business startups? (They're also dumping massive amounts of money into fruitless projects, mind you, an area that has clearly failed, e.g. the world's largest shopping mall, and it's completely empty.)
It's impossible to 100% fully implement any ideology, but looking on a scale, economically free countries, almost uniformly, are more prosperous.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
It's impossible to 100% fully implement any ideology, but looking on a scale, economically free countries, almost uniformly, are more prosperous.
Economies that balance free market with regulations are the ones that do the best.
Full scale anarchy is the only truly 'free' market. I.e. whatever I want to do is justified since I want to do it.
Too many libertarians and other supposedly 'free market' proponents conveniently forget the role regulations play in creating a level playing field...like net neutrality.
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No. The internet was fine when it was regulated. After regulation was dropped large providers such as Verizon and Comcast have been caught time and time again slowing down or completely blocking traffic that they did not like.
All the "new" regulations do is put things back to where they were a decade ago when the internet really was fine.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
I already paid Verizon to give me access to the internet (up AND down) at set speeds, they don't get to then charge the content provider that I have specifically requested content from another fee.
If there were any competition, people who were having their Netflix traffic throttled would switch to another ISP, but there aren't any other ISPs for most consumers.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
When ISPs were services that worked over telephone lines, they were information services. These days, they are clearly telecommunication services, or that physical portion of their business model should be split off to be such.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:4, Interesting)
No, freedom implies rule of law.
The Internet has been fine up to now without FCC intervention.
So it's not 'free' then right? There aren't laws governing the behavior of the ISPs so it can't be free.
'Freedom' is the express lack of restrictions, i.e. 'freedom of movement'. 'rule of law' specifically limits what is allowed and/or acceptable to society for the benefit of said society.
FCC regulation of UTILITIES is a restriction of the utility operator's activity for the benefit of society. You don't have 4 water systems in your town, you don't have 4 electric grids. Why should we have to have 4 sets of internet infrastructure to have competition?
ISPs, through franchising, have become defacto monopolies in entire areas and are behaving as such. Unless you build entirely separate infrastructure (i.e. 4 water systems) there is no competition and thus no free market. That is ALL the FCC is enforcing here - as a defacto monopoly you can't favor or disfavor traffic on your infrastructure.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why was the United States so successful?"
Huge tracts of empty land and unexploited resources, after disposing of the former occupents. Isolation from European politics allowing for rapid expansion. A market-driven economy may have been a big help, but it's certainly not the only factor in play.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Interesting)
All that is correct, but you're also forgetting WWI and WWII: before this, the US still wasn't that industrialized, though it certainly had become somewhat industrialized during the Gilded Age and Industrial Revolution. After WWII, it was the last industrialized power left standing without any significant major wartime damage, and had massively industrialized itself for the war effort. After the dust settled, American industry got extremely rich helping to rebuild everyone else. It's taken decades for that to finally wear off.
Basically, the US won the lottery.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:4, Interesting)
Tack onto that the GI Bill, which helped the US become the world leader in post secondary education.
Taking a crap ton of able bodied unemployed men and paying for their education helped elongate that post-war economic boom.
-Rick
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:4, Insightful)
unexploited resources
Ah, no. As a lot of Libertarians have pointed out, there are piss poor countries that are rich in resources and wealthy nations with no natural resources. It boils down to economic freedom.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:4, Interesting)
But if actual economic freedom actually came from no regulations, Somalia would have solid gold toilet seats by now and we'd be sending food and medicine to all of Scandinavia.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
"The lazy" sinking to the bottom is a commonly-held belief, but in fact being at the bottom is a lot more work than being at the top. It's not because people are "lazy" that they remain at the bottom. It's because most of the value their work produces is taken as profit by their employers, and they are paid the absolute minimum that their employers can get away with. If they were getting a decent cut of the value they create, they wouldn't be poor. That's not to say that there aren't lazy people at the bottom living corruptly, but the claim that if you are at the bottom, you are lazy, is a fallacy.
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Americans are willing to do those jobs, just not under the conditions and pay illegal immigrants will put up with.
You may be a lazy bum, but there's lots of people who work hard to survive while being poor.
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It's not clear to me that Americans are being offered these jobs. The problem is that Americans have legal rights, including minimum wage, so if you give an American a job you were paying an illegal alien (how can a person be illegal, anyway, but I digress) to do, and you try to pay them what you were paying the illegal person, they will be in a position of power over you, whereas the illegal person would have no power.
So if you want the kind of parity you are asking for, the cure is to get rid of the ide
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DMCA ring a bell? how about SOPA/PIPA? or the old SSSCA? How about all this recent wrangling over 'hate speech' and 'online harassment' that conveniently silences views criticizing 'progressive' expression? Obama's 'kill switch'? Bush's 'there ought to be limits on freedom'? The state's current view on public use of crypto? The behavior of the NSA learned from the snowden leaks?
I haven't read 'reason' so I can't speak to their views, but the above is certainly something a libertarian would have problems
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
Which, again, is libertarians unable to differentiate between bad regulation and no regulation, and engaging in FUD.
So please, enlighten me: how will Title II regulation lead to DMCA, SOPA, or hate speech codes? If anything, Title II ensures those things won't happen because, get this, the internet is already regulated (now) under some of the loosest standards under law. Any new regulations coming down the pike will affect much much more than the internet, since it will have to cover all of Title II, and will be a bigger fight.
In fact, I'm rather interested in how Title II will affect mass surveillance, as the laws concerning are much more stringent.
As with most anything, it's a question of tradeoffs. As libertarian utopia isn't coming any time soon, it might behoove libertarians to consider which ones they are willing to make, instead of this thinly veiled corporate pandering of a very narrow reading of libertarian philosophy.
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I thought the acronym was "internet service provider", which is obviously communications. The Internet was earlier classified by the FCC as an information service, which I consider a bad call. The FCC reclassified it, which they can do, and I'm much happier with this classification.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
The article is a really painful read that takes forever to get to the heart of its points, which seem to be:
In fact, ISP price discrimination is as likely to help new entrants as hurt them. Non-neutrality offers startups the potential to buy priority access, thus overcoming the inherent disadvantage of newness. With a neutral Internet, on the other hand, the advantages of incumbency can't be routed around by buying a leg-up in speed, access, or promotion.
That an incumbent content provider might enter into an agreement with an ISP to gain advantage over its smaller competitors in a non-neutral environment may be a reason to scrutinize such agreements under existing antitrust laws. For instance, if an ISP with dominant market share refused to give access to online content that competed with its own, antitrust law might look askance at such conduct. But it doesn't justify presumptively hamstringing an ISP's commercial arrangements when such conduct isn't remotely typical."
These are actually gobsmacking arguments for any serious libertarian to make. First of all, the idea that a new service should rightly throw money at the problem because new guys cannot compete by merely being simply better on an even playing field completely demolishes the heart of libertarian theory. Second of all, "gee, the gov't might save us from this abuse with antitrust laws" is an endorsement of the idea gov't should solve these kinds of problems. If antitrust law is good, perhaps net neutrality rules would be better? You cannot fall back on gov't competence in an argument against gov't oversight.
But for me, neither argument matters, even if they were correct. The real problem is the ISPs are making clear promises to their customers, and then they are trying to shake down the content providers with the threat of failing to meet the customer's reasonable expectations, based on what is written in the contract. When I pay for a promise for bandwidth, I want that bandwidth. I do not want the ISP to make secret re-negotiations about what bandwidth really means.
Re: Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:3, Insightful)
Precisely. Listen: the implication that payola scams were somehow a *good* thing is such a gross misunderstanding of history and so completely backward I don't even know where to start - that practice and all that it subsequently engendered is PRECISELY why the music industry is in the toilet today, it is a freaking case study in how to destroy an industry. They basically discredit their entire piece with that one ignorant statement, ridiculous.
Rules are for jerks (Score:3)
On one hand, government trying
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Informative)
No where does it cite any prior problem that it could have prevented, only hypothetical scenarios that could happen sometime in the future.
Comcast throttling of Netflix traffic until extortion money was paid actually happened. You don't need to imagine hypothetical future scenarios to see the issues this legislation addresses.
Re: (Score:3)
From my understanding Comcast wasn't throttling Netflix, they just didn't upgrade the lines between their network and Netflix servers to handle the extra load. Netflix then paid to have their servers added directly to Comcast's network. That is still legal under the new FCC rules.
That's the same as me living on a dirt road 5 miles off the main highway and complaining that the mail truck slows to 20 mph when coming down the road to deliver to me whereas he drives 55 mph on the main road when delivering to
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Interesting)
A similar situation would be if you bought road infrastructure via subscription, which is then used by the post office to deliver your mail. You pay a monthly fee for a guaranteed 55 mph road speed; however, you find that although most traffic can travel down the last 5-mile stretch to your house at 55 mph, the post office's mail truck can't travel faster than 20 mph due to the road infrastructure not being sufficiently upgraded. When you call to complain to the road infrastructure company, they tell you it's the post office's fault because the post office is refusing to pay to upgrade the roads.
Personally, this would leave me asking, "Why is this the post office's fault? I pay you, the road infrastructure company, for guaranteed road speed to my house -- not the post office!"
The short of it, is that Comcast is selling the service, guaranteeing a certain speed, not providing it due to intentionally avoiding upgrading their routers, and then telling their customer that the issue is Netflix's fault because they wont pay up.
Netflix even offered to pay for the routers -- and even install them -- and Comcast STILL refused. Not until Netflix started paying Comcast to house their servers inside their network did users get the bandwidth they are paying Comcast for when using the Netflix service.
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You apparently didn't notice the part where the lines were pointedly not upgraded. Imagine if the Post Office dug up the pavement on your road and dug potholes in it, THEN claimed that 20 MPH was the best they could be expected to do in that condition.
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
The dirt road is on the wrong end there. I wanted a nice paved road from my house to the highway. This company agreed to provide an unlimited use nice paved road that reached the highway for a reasonable fee that I paid. Since I didn't use it terribly often for years, I didn't notice that the off-ramp was actually metered and it was not an unlimited access route.
However, I started ordering goods from Amazon. Amazon started sending trucks with goods I had ordered. They got past the highway and then couldn't always reach my my nice paved road. The company I paid for unlimited nice paved road usage was not providing the service for which I had contracted. Rather than admit that they should not have offered a service which they could not provide, they went to Amazon and said "Hey, if you're going to send so many trucks down this road, can you pay for improvements to it?"
That wasn't Amazon's job, though. They shouldn't have to pay anything for that. I should. I'm the one that requested the contents of those trucks come this way. The road company should have come to me and admitted that they lied about being able to provide unlimited access at the advertised capacity and cost. They didn't, because they knew people would be upset with that breach of contract, particularly when it was revealed that this road company had repeatedly posted record profit instead of steadily investing in the full measure of necessary improvements to meet the demands I was making upon the roadway.
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Small startups are already facing a near-insurmountable barrier: Internet access is a natural monopoly. There's a huge build-out fee to enter an area - digging up roads and laying cables. There's no way to economically do so when competing against an incumbant too.
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"why I don't call myself a socialist" also applies in this case. This is because we're damned either way. We get network balkanization due to monopolies squabbling for control of the backbone or we get increased state control of the network. Neither are good for liberty, rights, or hell, even a relatively free market.
We had a brief window of what liberty could be like on the network, but that died awhile ago.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Reason: for corporations, by corporations (Score:5, Interesting)
No regulations, no permits, no artificial barriers to entry. Open competition. Cool.
I want to lay my own fiber in your neighborhood. So I bring my backhoes and dig up your street and lawn. Barbie down the street wants to lay fiber too, so she gets her backhoes. Perhaps you can see that unregulated open competition for infrastructure would be a big mess.
I have libertarianish views, and I hear what you're saying, but what you call the problem is not really the problem. The problem is trying to privatize infrastructure we all share.
The most logical entity to own infrastructure is The People. Call me a socialist, communist, whatever, but that's how it is.
But people don't like government, so they "privatize", which is to say, hand a monopoly to private hands.
So your choice. Regulated public ownership. Regulated localized monopolies. Unregulated libertarian fantasy of every american with a dream driving backhoes through your yard.
Screw that (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want ANYONE buying promotions into my IP stream! I want my ISP to do their freaking job and shift packets from the source to me, without molestation and without interest or undue visibility into the contents.
Re:Screw that (Score:4, Funny)
Decent people should be against having control of their own information stream.
Decent people shouldn't trust themselves to have their best interests at heart.
Decent people should submit to obvious superior corporate control.
Are you a decent person citizen?
Re:Screw that (Score:4, Interesting)
I am indecent, profane, and absolutely obscene... and goddamn proud of it! You can take your goddamn corporate authoritah and shove it up your ass sideways with razorblades then be made to clean up the ensuing blood pool off the floor with your tongue you goddamn corporate bastard!
*Please note that this is not a personal attack against Adriax and nor is the intended sarcasm completely lost on me... nor is the irony of posting this goddamn disclaimer... but this is seriously what these corporate/PC bastards that think this way need to be told.
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I don't want ANYONE buying promotions into my IP stream! I want my ISP to do their freaking job and shift packets from the source to me, without molestation and without interest or undue visibility into the contents.
Sadly, this is impossible. The problem is that there isn't one big pool of "internet" and a bunch of ISPs out there finding ways to sell it to you. Instead, a massive and intricate network of peering agreements exist just to make the internet function at the basic level, and THEN they figure out how to get it to your house. So, it's impossible for the FCC to say "hey verizon treat netflix with the same respect you would any other peer" because peering agreements work both ways, cost both companies money, a
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I don't think this is a cable company vs consumers issue so much as it is a content companies vs consumers issue.
A few cable companies (Charter is the biggest one with this view that I know of) said they'd be fine with just becoming a broadband company only. A few smaller ones have already done exactly that.
The cable companies who also happen to be content companies (Comcast) are fighting this the worst. That and the wireless providers (AT&T, Verizon) who presently have metered data penned as their new
Re:Screw that (Score:5, Informative)
This.
As long as the isps to my home are monopolies I don't want them engaging in "value added" services.
Take a look at Comcast and cable TV.
They have 100%+ markup on the service.
Then they charge the channels to be on the lineup, which you cant avoid.
Then they pop their commercials into the programming, usually poorly.
These people have already demonstrated they are unfit to be trusted with a monopoly. Absolutely no reason to let them monopolize.
The internet is not a broadcast medium. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The internet is not a broadcast medium. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's even worse when their argument is based around the assumption that Payola is a good thing.
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It's even worse when their argument is based around the assumption that Payola is a good thing.
Yeah, I laughed at that as well. It's not like the record industry is the type of business anyone should want to encourage
http://www.theguardian.com/mus... [theguardian.com]
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There are people/companies that are trying as hard as they can to turn it into something similar to broadcast media or, even worse, cable. It's something they understand. IMHO, it's similar to the way the Web changed once magazine designers started dictating what constituted good web page design -- squinty/headache-inducing text that can't be enlarged, horrible color schemes (including my newest least favorite: gray text on white background.). It wasn't ways pretty for the web user but it's something the de
Idiot (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong level of abstraction. The constraint is imposed on ISPs not web service providers.
Payola (Score:5, Insightful)
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Learn some history.
Payola was record companies paying disk jockeys to play specific music. It was made illegal to pay disc jockeys. The job of 'program director' was invented. There is no law against record companies paying program directors to play specific music. Never has been.
This is crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Is a non-neutral net the symptom or the disease? (Score:5, Insightful)
If lack of competition is the disease and we use regulation to mask the symptoms, won't we end up with more regulation while the disease persists?
"Whenever faced with a problem, some people say `Lets use regulation.'
Now, they have two problems."
(With apologies to D. Tilbrook)
I can summarize article (Score:5, Interesting)
1) net neutrality is pushed by a coalition of commies and rent-seeking aristocrats, so you should be against it
2) no one in government understands the Internet, so whatever they do will be wrong
3) even if you are a commie, you should know that the market always responds to what the consumers want in spite of corporations attempts at anti-competive practices, so we can trust the ISPs to always do what is best for us
Re:I can summarize article (Score:5, Insightful)
#3 is what mystifies me about the libertarian mindset. They believe that everything the government does will fail in one way or another (in spite of evidence that it doesn't always screw up and sometimes produces positive net outcomes) yet they think that private industry is universally benevolent and will always do what the consumer wants in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
I just don't get the disconnect from reality there.
Re:I can summarize article (Score:5, Insightful)
Their philosophy, like so many others, completely dismisses human greed from the equation and as such, fail to work in the real world. Human greed killed Communism (why should I work hard if I never see the benefit?). Human greed killed unregulated capitalism (why shouldn't I monopolize the market at the expense of everyone else?).
Very few people are really entirely altruistic. I know I'm not one of them. Not by a long shot. And that's why, even if it's flawed sometimes, we really do need government regulation.
Re: (Score:3)
A follow up thought:
There is a true irony here. The desire for government regulation really is driven by selfish self interest. I want to not be screwed over by selfish people running businesses so I can get more for myself. My desire for government regulation against selfishness stems from my own selfishness.
Re: (Score:3)
Their philosophy is logical and should work in theory
Only if your theory is incomplete.
Re:I can summarize article (Score:4, Informative)
Do you not remember the Great Depression and everything that lead up to it? The lack of regulation lead to huge boom and bust cycles that destroyed the economy of this country. It was only after passing a great deal of regulation that the economy recovered and we saw the greatest run of prosperity in the history of this country. But then the regulation started to be torn down in the 70's, with bits and pieces being torn down by both parties here and there since then and guess what. The boom and bust cycles are increasing in amplitude just like they were before and this country is worse off now that it was 30-40 years ago.
Sure, we don't need oppressive regulation that serves no real purpose. But an economy that has little to no regulation provides little economic freedom to most people and so it cannot really be called a "free" economy. There needs to be just enough regulation to make sure that everyone has free access to the economy in order to really see what a truly "free" economy can accomplish.
Re: (Score:3)
So you admit there was plenty of regulation and oversight, certainly no decrease.
There's no single cause to the Great Depression, however the Federal Reserve was perhaps the single biggest: Beginning in about 1920, they inflated the money supply using various manipulations of the interest rate and reserve requirement, combined with other legislation that made it artificially easy to secure credit. From the beginning to the end of the decade, the money supply increased about 60%. i.e., the number of dollars
Oh god the stupid... (Score:5, Interesting)
I went to Sperry's twitter page.
The amount of Libertarian derp is stunning.
Didn't bother with the other author.
Title II is in effect because the ISPs decided to not play nice with their customers. If everyone liked Comcast, for example, instead of calling it the absolute worst company in customer service, we would never be here.
The days of the mom-and-pop ISP with direct personal service and "organic growth" of the Internet has been over for more than a decade. And what has taken their places are large customer-fucking entities with abysmal customer service and that absolutely refuse to upgrade infrastructure but instead put caps on use to deal with the demand. And for that they demand ever higher payment. This is after we threw billions at them to install last-mile fiber that they never installed, but instead handed out to the shareholders.
In the People's Libertarian Paradise of Concord, NH, we have exactly *two* "broadband" providers, both of which suck massively, one of which doesn't even offer broadband as currently defined (=>25Mbps). Comcast and Fairpoint (unfairpoint, fairly bad point, etc)
That's why we are here. This is "why we can't have nice things."
Screw both of these guys and Reason magazine too. If not outright corporate shills, they are at least useful idiots.
Quislings come in all forms.
--
BMO
Re:Oh god the stupid... (Score:4, Insightful)
Removing regulations would do nothing to remove the immense cost to compete with the regional monopolies. In fact, in a completely unregulated economy that was unconcerned with anti-trust and monopolizing markets, I'm pretty sure that more of these mega ISPs would merge with one another. So instead of having four or five big ISPs nation wide, you'd have one or two.
The same convergence already happened in the phone industry, before they broke up Bell. Then Bell started to reassemble itself. In this particular space, the free market has been proven to move towards consolidation, for the benefit of big corporations and the detriment of their customers. Creating new competition seems to require government intervention.
So I guess you're pointing out that libertarians *think* they have a solution, but ignoring the fact that their solution has zero chance of working in the real world.
Payola? (Score:3)
There is also the minor issue that music is an optional cultural consumption, while internet access is a core piece of our infrastructure which no modern business can operate without?
Re:Payola? (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly, the authors of the paper feel that payola, corruption, and a lack of competition are good things.
Which is kind of the problem with articles from reason.com, which is so droolingly and un-flinchingly geared to a particular kind of fantasy economics as to make it something bordering on religious dogma.
Those who believe it are 100% convinced that it is perfect, complete, and any disagreement with it is heresy.
In fact, as someone who got over the flavor of the Ayn Rand koolaid and saw it for what it was, that's pretty much how it works. It's irrational, it defies both logic and evidence, totally ignores human nature ... but somehow it's holy fucking writ.
But you just keep acting like the other guy is beneath contempt and loudly saying things like "ah, but you would say that because you're a leftist who hasn't yet realized governments are tyranny, and our fictonal free market will solve all problems."
There is really nothing more irrational than someone defending this kind of crap.
This is the base of Rand Paul, which means they've drank so damned much of the koolaid there simply is no alternative, and they'll just go apoplectic trying to use their circular logic to defend it.
Bullshit ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet not being beholden to ISP business practices.
ISPs are, and should be treated as, conduits of data which has nothing at all to do with their damned business practices.
Or, you know, supported by corporate ass kissers who would have us believe that whatever the fuck corporations want is somehow good for us, when it's only good for corporations.
But the net neutrality movement has had less to do with class struggle than with the familiar delusion of technocrats everywhere: that government can "design" a better future if only it pulls the right levers.
Ah, here goes more bullshit and antigovernment everyone-but-me-is-elitist crap which suggests that preventing companies from acting like douchebags is crippling to companies who want to be douchebags.
Look, this is libertarian economic drivel which says corporate rent-seeking assholes should be able to extort a cut of someone because they have a successful product, and that it is really important for ISPs to be able to spy on your content to maximize their ad revenue.
Yes, because we don't want a fucking internet where you have to be kicking up some payola to some greedy asshole who did nothing other than say "nice innovation you have there, shame if something happened to it".
You know what needs to change? Companies who sell the newest stuff as if they really have it, refuse to invest in upgrading their infrastructure to keep it relevant, and then piss and moan when their outdated business model of "do nothing and keep charging more" proves to be useless.
This whole article is written by a corporate apologist who is changing the definitions of "innovation" and "stale business model" to make it sound like encumbant ISPs who are too lazy/cheap to be able to to charge a toll (in the form of payola or blocking traffic) so they can piggy back on the success of companies who actually make stuff.
This is entirely about saying "we should be able to gouge NetFlix, because they've come up with something cool and we haven't".
This is arguing for the right to be a parasite middleman, by companies who are otherwise collapsing under their own crushing weight of incompetence, laziness, and the feeling of being entitled to revenue they do not generate.
Interesting article (Score:5, Interesting)
The article is full of colorful language about network neutrality advocates, but also some sound reasoning that is unfortunately based on technical misunderstandings or misinformation. Once you look past the mischaracterizations (it's a political piece, after all - you speak to your audience and insult everyone who disagrees with you before you even consider making a point!), it's actually not that bad. There are lots of items in it that I'd like to respond to, as if I could fix the author's misunderstandings, but I'll just pick a one:
The more good content that providers make available, the more consumers will demand access to sites and apps, and the more ISPs will invest in the infrastructure to facilitate delivery.
That's what we want, but that isn't what is happening. The ISPs have little economic incentive to invest in infrastructure since they are mostly monopolies. That's why Comcast chose, instead of upgrading their bandwidth when customers started watching Netflix, to pressure Netflix into co-locating servers within Comcast's network. They only could do that because they are a monopoly. Comcast customers could not choose to switch to another provider, and Netflix cannot choose to route around Comcast.
One would think that after 10 years of political teeth-gnashing, regulatory rule making, and relentless litigating, there would by now be a strong economic case for net neutrality—a clear record of harmful practices and agreements embodying the types of behavior that only regulation can pre-empt. But there isn't.
This sounds like someone citing their ignorance on a topic as evidence that something didn't happen. In general, the authors need to recognize that: :-) Clearly they never had to dial-up to Prodigy to see one "web site" and then use Compuserve to see another one, then dial AOL to email someone else.
- ISPs are tied to cable/telecom monopolies.
- ISPs can't pick different "business models" without impacting individuals' free speech.
- We learned these lessons from what came before the internet.
- We've had real issues without Network Neutrality.
It will be interesting to see how "broken" the internet is in 10 years. Usually those predicting doom and gloom fade away. We shall see, eh?
Missing HTML tag (Score:3)
How to write an article for Reason. (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Pick a problem, any problem.
2. Claim it can be solved with laissez faire capitalism and will be worsened with any form of government intervention.
3. Ignore any evidence to the contrary.
In this article, the author acts as though the threat of data discrimination from cable and phone companies is fantastical speculation. But it's already happened, and so many times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org] In most markets, people only have one or two choices for a broadband connection, so they can't vote with their dollars effectively to resolve the problem. Much as I enjoy the elegance of free market principles, the Invisible Hand is not gonna fix this one.
No decent person? Sheesh (Score:3)
"No decent person," write Geoffrey Manne and Ben Sperry in a special issue of Reason, "should be *for* net neutrality."
No decent person? You might want to try not insulting people if you're trying to win them round to your point of view.
And how much money (Score:3)
would you be willing to bet against these guys not being paid lobbyists for Comcast?
NON-PROFIT NON-PARTISAN think tanks don't earn their money for salt on the bread by submitting stories to Reason.
They depend on generous sugar daddies to fund their thinktankery.
Comcast has a vast network of lobbyists.
Thyey clearlyt hate net neutrality, and you can bet your sweet ass that it has nothing to do with th e"fear of breaking the internet", and everything to do with not wanting government at all to regulate thewir business, just as Wall street don't want SEC to regulate them, or the oil companies not wanting the EPA to regulate them.
Corporations since the dawn of industry ALWAYS claimed that they don't want regulations, that they are good guys that can self-regulate, and that the invisible hand of the market will make everything OK.
We KNOW that if Comcast was to control the internet, it would very soon look like someone invented broadcast TV anno 1955.
Comcast would want to block skype, netflix, pandora etc. They want the option to start cutting off or hamnstringing third party services in order to better place their own service. They would love to play highway robbers or "toll gate" bandits extracting a toll for users.
They want the content providers to share ad or royalties revenue with them. And they want more flexibility to charge for "premium" content, under the giuse of quality of service. And who know what else they want around the corner. Maybe we wont really know what they want until they have a near monopoly so that they can start gouging folks with no alternative provider to escape to.
Wait, what? (Score:3)
The argument, and the Payola example, boil down to this: the way to prevent people from censoring your content is to pay them not to.
Counterargument: the way to prevent people from censoring your content is to make it illegal to do so, rather than buying in to their extortion racket.
Payola worked because the station owners controlled what got broadcast. But that's not how an open communications network is supposed to work.
Another bunch of idiots who need to SHUT UP (Score:3)
Re:The internet has just become Ma Bell (Score:5, Insightful)
No, we supported the FCC action because the ISPs left us no choice.
Ideally, I wouldn't want the government to get involved. However, the ISPs have a monopoly on wired, broadband Internet access (duopoly in some areas). If you want wired, broadband Internet access, you need to take what BIG_CABLE_ISP will give you. If communities aren't served by BIG_CABLE_ISP or BIG_TELECOM_ISP, they can't form their own broadband efforts because said big companies will lobby state legislators to ban these efforts as "bad for competition." (As in, should they ever decide to expand into these areas, they would actually have competition and that's bad.)
This still wouldn't have been enough to support FCC action, but the ISPs got greedy. They saw Google, Netflix, and others making money online and thought "people are using our connections to buy stuff so why doesn't some of that money go to us?!!!" (Completely ignoring that some does in the form of ISP service bills.) They tried to charge companies extra to reach customers via "fast lanes" lest their data be regulated to an unusable slow lane.
In a perfect world, customers could just vote with their wallets and switch ISPs, but they couldn't due to the monopoly situation above. So the FCC stepped in. First, they instituted extremely weak rules that would basically allow the ISPs to do whatever they wanted. Verizon took offense to there being even weak rules and sued. They won, but the courts told the FCC "if you want to do this, you need to use Title II." So in winning, Verizon actually lost.
In short, we didn't want to go to the FCC. We just wanted things to operate the way they always had been operating. But the ISPs' greed forced action and then Verizon's greed forced stronger action.
Re: (Score:3)
The proposed Title II regulations shut down fast lanes, but does nothing about other forms of preferential treatment. Data cap exclusions are one exam
Re: (Score:3)
I agree that the FCC's rules aren't going to stop all abuses. They are a good start and should stop much of the "Internet companies are using our pipes for free so we need to charge them" talk. (Hint: Internet companies pay their OWN ISPs for bandwidth. They aren't sneaking into their neighbor's house and plugging a network cord into their neighbor's router.) The FCC should definite focus a close eye on data caps - especially when they are used by monopoly cable ISPs to negatively impact Internet video
Re: (Score:3)
I could make a similar criticism of the libertarians: Whenever some minimal level of regulation proves ineffective, they don't ask what can be done to fix the regulation: They just declare that this shows no regulation can be justified and call for repeal.
Re:The internet has just become Ma Bell (Score:4, Insightful)
In short, we didn't want to go to the FCC. We just wanted things to operate the way they always had been operating. But the ISPs' greed forced action and then Verizon's greed forced stronger action.
A very reasoned response. Internet access has no resemblance to a free market, at least not like Hayek, Friedman, Mille for any of the other great Chicago gang would define it. The incumbents want to use regulators to maintain their market dominance and eliminate real competition, something another Chicago guy wrote about as well. Open up the last mile to real competition and then you can argue that ISPs should be allowed to charge providers for faster service. However, as long a they maintain a monopoly or duopoly position then regulation is appropriate to ensure everyone gets the same treatment.
The problem underlying this fight is the big ISPs are realizing the connection will be the valuable piece in the future, and not merely a profitable Haddon to there cable business. As Apple, Amazon, Netflix et. al. chip away at the core cable business they (the cable companies / ISP) are looking for ways to protect revenue steams. Preventing others from entering the ISP space is critical to maintaining that revenue stream; and why they are willing to spend big dollars on lawyers, lobbyists and campaign contributions to do so.
Re:The internet has just become Ma Bell (Score:5, Insightful)
"The primary reason there is usually only a very small number of ISP's that serve a particular area is simple, and it doesn't involve tin foil hats or conspiracy theories. It is that building broadband infrastructure is fucking expensive. Everything from the hardware, to the permits, but especially the construction."
Humm... probably that's the first time something like that has happened ever before.
Let's see... The reason there are a very small number of truck transportation companies is because building highways for the trucks is damn expensive.
Hey, this gives me an idea! What if cabling and services on top like Internet access get managed by different entities!? What if we consider cabling a basic infrastructure just like roads and let them be publicly managed and subsidized by the services on top of them?
Re:The internet has just become Ma Bell (Score:4, Interesting)
The primary reason there is usually only a very small number of ISP's that serve a particular area is simple, and it doesn't involve tin foil hats or conspiracy theories. It is that building broadband infrastructure is fucking expensive. Everything from the hardware, to the permits, but especially the construction.
The problem with that theory is that I was actually alive and paying attention when the local monopolies were created...and your argument is EXACTLY the argument made by the various cable companies to get the government to GRANT them a monopoly in the various local areas. What nobody in government thought about (and if you tried to say it, you were called a crackpot) was, if cable was a natural monopoly, why did they need the government to grant them a monopoly? Wouldn't the company that did the best just end up with a monopoly?
Except that isn't what happened. What happened was that local municipalities were allowed to grant local monopolies for cable service. Then once every area where it was profitable to offer cable service had cable service, the big players began buying up everyone else. It didn't matter that they had lousy service, they had a monopoly, and the local municipalities discovered that they no longer had any leverage because they could no longer take the franchise for the local area back and give it to someone else because there was no one else.
Re:One highly-publicized case is all it took (Score:5, Informative)
A private company paid a bunch of money to another private company and users got the same video streaming performance they used to have before private company B starting throttling private company A's ability to deliver content that was already paid for by the users to both companies involved.
FTFY
Re:One highly-publicized case is all it took (Score:4, Interesting)
That's an interesting re-intreptation.
On the other hand, I could just as easily say that one private company paid a bunch of money to another private company (after already having paid yet another company a bunch of money to send the same data), and users final got the service that they already paid a bunch of money to that second company to receive.
Because, you know, that's what actually happened.
Re:One highly-publicized case is all it took (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic. All net neutrality does is ensure the playing field stays level. You have to keep in mind that cable companies/broadcasters want to be the sole content provider, and they want you to pay them for it. They don't want Netflix; they don't want YouTube. You may not be old enough to recall when the cable providers tried very hard to degrade service to customers requesting Netflix because it was eating into their own pay-per-view model. When that didn't work, they decided to extort money from content providers and degrade the service until they got paid. Comcast was caught unambiguously doing this.
As netizens, we want the packets we request delivered unimpeded and unscrutinized to our browser. Tiered pricing takes care of getting video at the desired quality over simpler sites. If I'm only browsing eBay I'll get the low-end. If I'm viewing Netflix, I'll have to pay for the turbo-whatever. That should be my choice as a consumer.
Net neutrality makes it far easier for smaller players to compete. They don't have to have the muscle to negotiate with major ISPs they would otherwise need to in a non-nn environment.
Pointing to the LA Times article is weird too, if you weren't being sarcastic. It's basically a highly speculative non-issue, endorsed by a representative whose top contributing industry is the movie/television/music industry. The top 3 of Rep Walden's 4 contributors are the National Association of Broadcasters, Comcast, and 21st Century Fox. I wouldn't exactly call him "impartial" on the matter.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So, you know that's not how it worked, right? Comcast told Netflix: "We want you to give us money." Netflix said: "That's what your customers are for, and they're paying you." Comcast said: "Fine, then we'll SLOW YOU DOWN." - they then proceeded to actually throttle (decrease) Netflix' bandwidth. Customers through Comcast said: "Netflix, why you suck so bad? Your service sucks!" and started to go to Amazon Prime instead. Netflix went: "Well, that's lame. Comcast, can't you restore us to normal?" Comcast sai
Re:One highly-publicized case is all it took (Score:4, Interesting)
They didn't pay for more bandwidth. You ALREADY paid for that bandwidth (say, 5mbit down). Comcast decided they didn't want to provide you 5mbit worth of Netflix, though, without Netflix ALSO paying, even though Netflix had already paid whoever they have as an ISP on their end.
This wasn't Netflix running out of bandwidth and having to increase their uplink speed, and it wasn't the consumer running out of bandwidth and having to pay to increase their download speed. This was Comcast deciding that Netflix was causing you (and your peers) to use too much of your already-paid for bandwidth. Comcast couldn't keep up with the consistent and simultaneous demand on what you supposedly had access to. So, instead, it throttled Netflix (which users saw as being Netflix's problem - hey, Netflix can't keep up!) and then charged Netflix to unthrottle (which users saw as Netflix "buying more bandwidth" so Netflix could keep up). In reality, it was Comcast that essentially oversold their bandwidth (you can have 5mbit down! oh, wait, nevermind, we can't supply all this bandwidth all at once; hey, a lot of it is being used by Netflix, maybe we could get them to pay more so it doesn't look like we were unprepared for demand on services we sold!)
This isn't unlike an airline overselling their flights. The difference is that when a flight fills up and customers who already paid for their tickets can't actually fit on the plane anymore, the airline doesn't start charging the destination more because the destination is using too much space on their plane. They give the customers who can't get on the plane at the very least a free transfer, and I think they get a free future lfight or something, too? Or a refund + flight? Something like that. In other words, the airliner realizes that part of overselling means that you have to deal with the consequences that occasionally come up with overselling... and "deal with" doesn't mean "charge someone else for your own lack of space that you sold as though you had more space than you actually did."
TL;DR: Comcast oversold their bandwidth and decided to make Netflix pay for it.
Obama should negotiate (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem (as you recognize) is that the administration is trying to go about this unilaterally. Obama is still acting like it's 2009 with his "I won" mentality. But what one President can order, the next can change.
Instead, the executive branch and the legislative branch should agree on what the law should be and make it so; unfortunately there has been no effort to reach any kind of compromise.
Re: (Score:3)
Your premise is comprehensively faulty. First, in this case, President Obama hasn't done anything. OK, he prodded the FCC, but the FCC undertook action based on the FCC's authority and charter.
The FCC is not part of the administrative, legislative or judicial branches of the government. It is part of a beast that has grown up in which authority has been legislatively delegated to a number of independent agencies. You won't find enumerated or referenced in the Constitution this beast which is embodied in the
Re:Poor persuasion (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I'd really rather have a competitive marketplace, where I could take it into my own hands and say, "If you won't provide me what I need, I will go to your competitors." In the current environment, they will just say, "What competitors?"
Since we don't have a competitive marketplace, we get regulation instead. This upsets some people. I am not one of them.