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How we got to the point where utility-style regulation is seen as the key to ensuring a free and open internet is a true puzzle. Utility-style regulation gives

by grellas 10y ago

How we got to the point where utility-style regulation is seen as the key to ensuring a free and open internet is a true puzzle. Utility-style regulation gives regulators plenary authority over the internet - meaning full and complete. Their power to do this or to forbid that is highly discretionary and essentially boundless. This in turn gives a gatekeeper role to the regulators: you play by their rules or you don't play. And that means they have final say over what happens across the internet, at least within U.S. jurisdiction. So today they say net neutrality rules. Tomorrow maybe it is price controls in the name of consumer fairness. Or maybe it is mandated compliance with government snooping orders in the name of national security. Or who knows what not? Why not? With a utility-style regulatory framework, you essentially have a form of administrative law run wild, legally speaking. Standards are exceedingly vague, power is wildly broad, and (in the end) he who has the most power and pull to control the regulators winds up having the final say over what the law is or is not as it affects the internet. This is the exact antithesis of the largely hands-off idea of what the government could do with respect to the internet over the past several decades. Of course law tends to conform in the short term to what people want and, today, most people truly do want a free and open internet. Therefore, the risk of any existential threat to internet freedom is either minimal or non-existent in the short term. But if your idea of preserving maximum internet freedom is in effect to place a loaded gun to its head and then declare it is not a problem because it is the good guys who control it and who therefore will use it only for good purposes, then you have what you want with utility-style regulation of the internet. It might just work great as long as the good guys are in control. But what happens when it changes some day? And, if you think it cannot, then you have far, far more faith in human nature than I can possibly summon. Welcome to the brave new world.

thenewwazoo 10y ago
I think you're ignoring the very real problems with the Internet infrastructure while you raise alarms about prospective problems. The reason utility-style regulation is a good thing is because the Internet is a utility. And like most other utilities, natural monopolies arise and the free market is distorted. There is already a gun to the head of the Internet, but instead of being putatively controlled by the populous at large it is controlled by entrenched rent-seeking oligopolists who are beholden only to shareholders that do not care about the function of the market. Yes, there is a risk that the regulators will declare any number of rules for any number of reasons. Yes, regulatory capture of regulators is a real problem. The solution to these two problems is not to cede control to multinational corporations. Your lack of faith in human nature should extend to all humans, not just ones who are the apparatus of the state.
- cderwin 10y ago
  > Your lack of faith in human nature should extend to all humans, not just ones who are the apparatus of the state. It's not that there's some reason to preternaturally trust corporations and to distrust the state, it's that the apparatus of the state is infinitely more powerful. If a corporation acts unethically, you lose the benefits and service it provides. If the state acts unethically, you lose your freedom and/or your life. That's a colossal difference. Likewise, if the choice is between Google controlling access to the internet and Chinese-style regulation controlling access to the internet, there's really no choice at all: who would pick Chinese internet service over Google Fiber? And make no mistake: with utility-style regulation the only boundary between the FCC and the PRC is "the people", and if this year's election has shown anything, they are a fickle and largely ignorant bunch. "Utility-style regulation" isn't an epithet because the internet shouldn't be treated as a utility; it's an epithet because utility regulation over the past hundred years has been absolutely disastrous, enabling the supreme power of corporations, not limiting it. It's really, really sad to see the internet falling into the hands of telecoms and the FCC.
  - gumby 10y ago
    Metacomment: I disagree with this comment but was sorry to see it down voted (greyed out) so upvoted it. It doesn't matter at this point why I might disagree with it; it's on topic and did not deserve a down vote just because someone(s) disagreed with it.
  - thenewwazoo 10y ago
    > if the choice is between Google controlling access to the internet and Chinese-style regulation You're committing the fallacy of the excluded middle. There is a massive gulf between unregulated behavior of publicly-held companies and authoritarian dictatorship by an unelected body, and the USA is somewhere there in the middle.
    - treehau5 10y ago
      I think this is more along the lines of false dilemma, no? oh I see this is an alias for that. false dilemma, false dichotomy and excluded middle are apparently all the same thing.
gshulegaard 10y ago
I don't know if you meant to or not, but you basically described the classic criticism against using regulation to combat natural monopolies/monopolies in general. In a perfect world, competition and crowd dynamics maintain openness because no single actor can influence the overall market. Unfortunately, in practice we don't see perfect competition which leaves many angles for sufficiently large market participants to influence the overall market. There are examples from relatively recent history where regulation had varying degrees of success curbing monopolistic exploits. So I wouldn't call this a brave new world so much a slight return to the "Trust Busting" regulatory days which more or less went defunct in the last 30 odd years. While I hear your point and I think your reasoning is sound, this particular event happens to be a step in the right direction and I am not keen to throw the baby out with the bath water in this specific instance.
forrestthewoods 10y ago
What? It's not a puzzle at all! Internet access is provided by cable and phone companies. Those companies are utility companies. They have government sponsored monopolies. It was inevitable that the internet access the utility companies provide would eventually see utility-style regulation. Net neutrality sucks. It's a shit solution. The real solution is ISP competition. If consumers were able to choose from a dozen competing ISPs then net neutrality and all this regulation wouldn't be necessary. The true puzzle is how do we enable ISP competition. It's not easy. But it's true solution.
- thenewwazoo 10y ago
  Is enabling competition in fact the puzzle, though? This is a problem that's been studied intensively for well over a hundred years and solved in lots of other places. It's the same problem as power regulation, water regulation, closed-circuit television regulation, and so on. I don't think the problem is finding a solution at all. I think the problem is convincing citizens that adopting the solutions implemented elsewhere (e.g. decoupling infrastructure from service, community-owned utilities, etc) is a thing worth supporting.
- chrishacken 10y ago
  I don't think many people realize just how difficult it is to start an ISP and compete. I started an ISP late last year (Shameless plug: https://nepafiber.com https://nepafiber.com ), and I have a new found respect for ISP's. Don't get me wrong, I think most of them do an extremely shitty job at what they do. But starting one requires enormous sums of money. Furthermore, even though we hit profitability after our 4th month in business, raising money has extremely difficult because no one thinks we can weather the storm given how large and powerful other telecoms are.
  - forrestthewoods 10y ago
    It requires enormous sums of money to start. But it is also enormously profitable. Time Warner has a profit margin of 97% on their ISP business. Which sounds about right. When profit margins are that high capital finds a way. What capital can't do is chop through red tape, burdensome regulation, and noncompetitive system. Your investors aren't crazy. You challenge titans! But your difficulty isn't going to be technical. It's going to be those titans doing everything in their (significant) power to stop competition. They want to protect their 97% margin after all!
matt4077 10y ago
Welcome to the somewhat repetitive slippery-slope fallacy. You argue like market-based solution are not subject to the darker side of human nature, when, in fact, the conflict of interest, especially in a natural oligopoly like terrestrial internet, is one of it's fundamental pillars.
- tunesmith 10y ago
  It's yet another argument that insists on ignoring the existence of the Tragedy of the Commons phenomenon. It's just invalid to argue that regulation is never necessary.
hnhire_me 10y ago
> But if your idea of preserving maximum internet freedom is in effect to place a loaded gun to its head and then declare it is not a problem because it is the good guys who control it and who therefore will use it only for good purposes, then you have what you want with utility-style regulation of the internet. The problem is with an oligopoly of effectively 0-2 providers in the majority of the US you really don't have a choice. I'd prefer to have the gun in the hand of the government instead of a corporation who decided to stop investing in infrastructure and just milk the situation. You really need substantial competition (10+ providers) for the free market to function.
- kodablah 10y ago
  > You really need substantial competition (10+ providers) for the free market to function. This is the most salient point. I would completely agree with OP (and I am generally in favor of fewer regulations) were we all able to choose our providers.
  - jethro_tell 10y ago
    Right, It should be obvious, but the market only works if it exists.
- cbhl 10y ago
  Didn't the lack of providers in the majority of the US happen because municipal governments got to regulate rights-of-way for installing infrastructure (copper telephone and cable wires, fiber optic cables)?
  - sliverstorm 10y ago
    Construction season is bad enough maintaining just the infrastructure in the ground already. So that one makes sense to me.
  - hnhire_me 10y ago
    > Didn't the lack of providers in the majority of the US happen because municipal governments got to regulate rights-of-way for installing infrastructure (copper telephone and cable wires, fiber optic cables)? Yes. LA 2015 Election: https://ballotpedia.org/Paul_Krekorian https://ballotpedia.org/Paul_Krekorian AT&T - $14,400 Verizon - $7,753 2 of his top 5 contributors were the local ISPs. Unfortunately there aren't any good data sources that provide country-wide coverage of this information but I'd be willing to bet its a very common practice.
superuser2 10y ago
We accept the unbounded authority of law to dictate the terms of the internet, or we accept the unbounded authority of Comcast to dictate the terms of the internet. I have at least token influence over the behavior of my government. I do not have even the illusion of input into Comcast's iptables configuration. In a truly competitive market it would be different. And I'd love to see a truly competive market. But as it stands, the alternative to government isn't freedom, it's unbounded and unchecked power by the cable monopolies to decide what the internet is and isn't. If someone's going to make that call, I'd rather it be someone I can vote against.
- cderwin 10y ago
  > We accept the unbounded authority of law to dictate the terms of the internet, or we accept the unbounded authority of Comcast to dictate the terms of the internet. Ahh, but we accept the unbounded authority of law to dictate far more than our internet: our property, our freedom, and (unfortunately) our very lives. What reason is there to expect the government not to regulate every other aspect of life with data from the internet? At least Comcast can't do that.
  - superuser2 10y ago
    By all accounts the government already has all data from the internet; whether they use it in law enforcement action and whether they regulate ISP's QoS policies are separate matters.
  - dv_dt 10y ago
    The law is bounded by the Constitution and the process of evaluating and passing laws in the government. It may be slow, and unpleasant, and difficult to get ones particular views in place, but there is a defined, if imperfect, process to do so. The change process doesn't exist at all if the services that are offered by a company are entirely private, except by customer choice. And if there are too few choices, then well a monopoly ISP could ban encryption on all their offered links, and parse all the data going by for resale to marketers and right back to the government too - except perhaps for those inconvenient government privacy regulations (or other regulatory rules) which may stand in the way.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
If nobody were to step in and instead let Comcast, et al do whatever, the internet would be crap. Pure crap. We can argue how it got that way, but apparently nobody wants to fix that, so it's a pointless argument to have.
Brybry 10y ago
The "bad guys" will remove the regulations and let the existing regional monopolies and duopolies do whatever they want. It's a lot easier and generates less noise than changing the rules to be openly biased while accomplishing the same thing. Just look at what cable companies are doing after regulation requiring unencrypted basic cable service was removed. Companies are requiring users to rent a proprietary DTA; when their TVs already support clear QAM, so there is no valid analog spectrum freeing argument. That deregulation was done by the FCC under different management than it is now (~2012 iirc) and in the declaration all of the commissioners were patting themselves on the back and saying what a huge win it was for consumers. Now, 4 years later, the government is having to look at regulating set top boxes in general so that consumers can actually have choices, own the equipment in their home, and not be locked to a provider.
polarix 10y ago
Have we considered crafting an agency as an information infrastructure policy steward, with the explicit intent to prohibit and prosecute any local and state regulations which would harm the proliferation of information infrastructure. Probably this is not the FCC since its mandate is too broad. But if some such agency had the ability to force municipalities to allow private infrastructure investment, we might start to get the internet we want pretty quickly.
- thenewwazoo 10y ago
  I read an argument once for nationalizing Internet infrastructure under the auspices of the US Postal Service (which is a constitutionally-mandated public utility), as the Internet serves the same public good as the post did for hundreds of years (and arguably still does). It was an audacious proposal, obviously, but I thought the idea was intriguing.
lubesGordi 10y ago
Gotta love the standard libertarian argument that ignores all facts and argues purely a priori. Hilarious.
AndyMcConachie 10y ago
Perhaps if American ISPs didn't abude their monopoly position we wouldn't need regulation. Unfortunately, they do and will continue to abuse their monopoly positions unless forced to do otherwise. They had their chance to not be jerks, they failed, and now they're regulated. Also, cable companies and ISPs have consistently been rated terribly by consumers in recent years. Most citizens view these companies as utility providers and just want them to deliver cheap consistent service. Title II makes sense in that context.
hackuser 10y ago
> Their power to do this or to forbid that is highly discretionary and essentially boundless. This isn't true; the regulators are restricted by the law and by politics. In the end, the power exists - political power is preserved - the only question is who controls it. For issues important to society, U.S. tradition is that power is allocated democratically. Americans take a vote; power is ultimately in the hands of the voters. Every other potential authority is theoretically just as powerful and arbitrary, and usually in practice is more powerful and arbitrary (IMHO). I agree about the risks; democracy is the worst possible system - until you look at the alternatives. What better alternative is there?
trolly 10y ago
This sophomoric understanding and attitude is mind boggling. So your argument is "...but guys why would we want a utility to be treated like a utility!?" You're entire premise is based around the idea that this regulation is fine because the "good guys" are in charge but what happens when "bad guys" are in charge. There for the only reasonable system is to limit the potential power of the "bad guys" by limiting effectiveness of government to a practically nonexistent state. Well guess what, "bad guys" don't magically limit themselves to government. (For the record here I'm defining "bad guys" as individuals, groups of individuals or organizations that would freely and willingly negatively affect the welfare of large groups of people for their own benefit. This could mean direct monetary gain, indirect gains from those that directly received them, societal gains, ideological or psychological gains from the feeling of imposing your will and views on others, etc. etc.) It doesn't matter if we're talking about politics, commerce, religion, whatever. People like that are drawn to ANY institution that gives them the opportunity to advance their own interests. Hell we all do it to some degree. Some of us are obviously worse than others in both degree and extent. The reason this regulation came about is many see the internet as a utility of great public interest. Meaning widespread, reliable, easy and cheap access to it has the potential of accelerating the growth and prosperity of our society and species as a whole. I hop I don't have to explain to you have worse off we would be without water, electricity, sewage and telephones being treated as public utilities. In this instance that "bad guys" slithered their way not into the government side of the equation, but into business side. One of the only methods of countering "bad guys" in the market is classic free market principles. Free competition would mean "good guys" are able to enter the market and naturally drive the "bad guys" out. Invisible hand and all that jazz. Reality does not often work like that though. It's far more complex. By using tactics to reduce competition such as buying up competitors or forcing them out of business, [mostly indirect] collusion to split up geographic markets, creating artificial barriers to entry, influencing regulation to prevent communities helping themselves, etc, they were able to carve out a pretty comfortable little position for themselves in the economy. That's not even mentioning the fact that even without all that some markets are inherently resistant to free market forces thanks to natural barriers to entry such as the the sheer difficulty and cost of laying physical lines. Now these "bad guys" (note: obviously some excellent [mostly smaller] ISPs remain) are set up in a position to adversely affect the very prosperity of our society increasingly dependent on access to information and communication. I.e. fuck your start up and your ability to reach potential new customers because you're not peered with our "Lead Generation Package™", fuck your farm and any hope you had of learning new techniques because that site can only be reached with "Access Plus™" package, fuck xyz but please enjoy our own content network for Free™. Fuck you and whatever economic influence we might be having on your lives or businesses. Instead we're going to do all this mostly so you watch more of OUR TV SHOWS and ADVERTISEMENTS. If i didn't find it so disturbing I would find it hilarious you used Brave New World in your argument AGAINST these regulations. These regulation are important because with some things it doesn't matter who says them. "DON'T FUCK WITH OUR PROSPERITY BUT FUCKING WITH PEOPLES ABILITY TO SHARE IDEAS AND INFORMATION" That's what it comes down to and it's pretty simple. After all if Hitler himself said "do not eat babies" you wouldn't throw your hands up in response "well looks like we need to ban any future possibility of anti baby eating rules if HITLER can say not to eat them." If the FCC actually starts doing things you're talking THEN lets talk. It's a good thing we live in a system that lets us do that it's it? The idea that there's some "magic bullet" that can limit the "bad guys" indefinitely is frankly juvenile at best. The idea that that "magic bullet" is limiting regulatory powers to non-existent is fucking absurd, "because "bad guys" only choose to slim their way into government" right? The fact of the matter is the only thing that can stop "bad guys" is "good guys" having constant vigilance and a system of checks and balances that enables them to do something about it. In this case the voice of the "good guys" is being heard through sound public policy checking and balancing the power of large incumbent businesses.
fredgrott 10y ago
reminds me of the gun control issue with the same exact philosophy about regulation.
belorn 10y ago
> How we got to the point where utility-style regulation is seen as the key to ensuring a free and open internet is a true puzzle. The answer is not that much of a puzzle. Is very hard to dig water pipes, draw power lines, copper, and fiber without direct cooperation with of the government. Every single utility provider more or less exist because they had cooperation with government, and any current monopoly status is a product of that. Governments, be that US or any other nation, has a responsibility to limit the harm from such monopolies. They created the mess so they got to clean it up. Personally, I would have preferred if the state created monopolies could be out-competed by deregulation of "good" radio frequencies, thus allowing for cheap nationwide wireless ISPs, but the furthest we got with that is the mobile networks and its arguable if it can be said to compete with the last mile monopolies and fiber networks. Speed, latency and coverage being difficult problems to solve with current technology and frequencies regulation.
ascendantlogic 10y ago
This sort of discussion always ignores the fact that the Oligopoly of ISPs have secured last-mile monopolies in a lot of states around the country. There is no free market competition to be had because these companies have explicitly agreed not to compete with each other and to buy their way to local monopolies. What recourse is there in this situation other than to have the federal government strip them of their ability to abuse their position of power?
- ultramancool 10y ago
  The only alternative to complete control by a monopoly should not be complete control by governments. There is a middle ground and it's proven to be quite functional. Look at how this is solved in other places such as Canada or the UK where they instead force the ISPs to lease lines at reasonable rates. It's caused a massive shift in cost and speed of connections.
  - ascendantlogic 10y ago
    The federal government forcing ISPs to do anything falls into the "complete control" category. The "right" thing to do would be to strip states of their ability to enter into abusive, monopolistic agreements to begin with, but then there'd be the massive issue if the federal government stomping all over state sovereignty which is its own minefield of hazards and political suicide.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      There would also be the issues that 1) it doesn't work. The cost of building a last mile network is a massive deterrent to competition even in Europe, which as Americans tend to like to point out in discussions like this, has a far higher population density than the US, which makes it more cost effective, - places that allow it rarely see a proliferation of competitors, and certainly nothing like the EU/EEA competitive situation where having access to dozens of ISPs is the norm most places. 2) if it does work against all odds, there would be massive issues with companies digging up the streets all the time. The "complete control" in the EU is very limited. The details vary by country, but the telecoms directive required each member state to ensure that access to the last mile was guaranteed. Most countries have opted for a solution where the incumbent was forced to separate out the operation and maintenance of the last mile infrastructure, regulated its prices on a cost plus basis and outlaw differentiated prices per provider, and provide access for competitors to lease space for equipment in local exchanges. The rest of the ISP space is mostly unregulated. What has been regulated is access to critical last-mile infrastructure. Nothing but cost stops people from building additional last-mile infrastructure. In the UK, for example, we have numerous fibre ISPs operating their on physical infrastructure in the larger cities, where you can cover a lot of subscribers for relatively low cost, as well as Virgin Media (cable provider) that maintains their own cable infrastructure, and anyone can pay for access to install additional conduits. But the point is you can start a competitive ISPs without it. In fact, due to backhaul (you can get IP handoff of your customers connections at a set of central locations rather than having to put your own equipment in), you can start an ISP very cheaply, and grow by adding equipment in exchanges as it becomes cost effective). In fact, this solution has made control harder. E.g. the court decisions to block the Pirate Bay applies to a set of the largest providers only, presumably because they figured it was the most "bang for the buck" in terms of court costs. But pretty much anyone can choose from any of dozens of other ISPs without such blocks in place if they can't be bothered the hassle of working around it. Similarly the infamous "child porn filters", is something that the largest ISPs have been coerced to "voluntarily" sign up to, but because the government does not have the balls to try to push regulation of it through parliament, anyone who oppose the filters (good reason to: there's no oversight over what exactly is being filtered) can chose from dozens of ISPs that don't use them.
ultramancool 10y ago
Well said. This is why I'm surprised the US hasn't gone the route that both Canada and the UK have: have regulators force ISPs to share lines. This method basically allows government hands only on the minimum required to enforce competition. In a few years with this system in Canada I saw basically a 10x speed increase at very close prices and real competition over which ISP I'd go with. I think this is a far better compromise, allow the market to do its job, just use minimal regulation to force the market to actually exist.
- toast0 10y ago
  The US did go down that route, in 1996. The FCC decided that only applied to telephone operators and not cable operators; then the telephone operators complained it wasn't fair, and eventually it didn't apply to anything. There were issues with implementation as well, AT&T* would commonly offer lower prices to consumers directly through wholesaling; which makes it pretty hard to compete That said, I would prefer a return to the mandatory access regime as well. * which was mostly SBC at the time
  - bhauer 10y ago
    For all of the bumps and warts of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as a consumer I remember the era fondly. My personal Internet connectivity improved more significantly (in terms of percentage improvement over time) in that era than it has since. Since that regime was dismantled, innovation in Internet connectivity has seemed far more stagnant and difficult for upstart companies to disrupt. It is a bit disappointing that we have elected to go down the path we have rather than revisit the model from 1996.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  The US used to have this. Republicans got rid of it.
  - Kadin 10y ago
    Not sure why this is being downvoted; it's pretty much the straightforward truth of what happened. The US had Local Loop Unbundling for copper phone circuits from 1996 to 2005. In 2005 under Kevin Martin, who was a political appointee under G.W. Bush and widely understood to be a friend to the ILECs, the FCC stopped defending the policy and basically gutted it through rulemaking. They could have done then what the FCC is doing now, and either threatened or actually moved forward with reclassification, but decided not to for what were pretty clearly political reasons. These issues are, very obviously, political; anyone claiming otherwise is either being deceitful or deeply in denial.
st3v3r 10y ago
"This is the exact antithesis of the largely hands-off idea of what the government could do with respect to the internet over the past several decades." And the ISPs showed us why that's a terrible idea. Remember, no one was talking about net neutrality until the big ISPs decided they wanted to fuck with the internet.
the8472 10y ago
Internet is a public utility: - you want a dumb pipe that delivers the resource. there are very few distinguishing factors on which suppliers could compete - basic enabling technology on which other amenities depend - installation costs dominate. you're not paying for the photons or electrons - everyone should be served, not just customers in lucrative locations Certainly, internet access does not rank on the same level of maslow's hierarchy of needs as clean tap water, garbage disposal or electricity. But it shares many of the supply properties.
- webXL 10y ago
  I not only want a dumb pipe, but one that's going to get bigger over time, like it has been, for a reasonable price. I'm not sure how net neutrality is supposed to accomplish that. I don't need my water to taste better over time, or my electricity in different voltages. You can't just declare something a utility without honestly pointing out these differences and addressing potential ramifications.
  - Natanael_L 10y ago
    With fiber, that's solved by putting fiber in the ground in installation, to then upgrade the switches at each end as necessary. Kind of like what electric utilities already do with small growing industries.
    - webXL 10y ago
      Okay, but what's the incentive for providers to upgrade the switches?
      - freeone3000 10y ago
        You pay them money.
        webXL 10y ago
        That's not an incentive for monopolies. They'll take your money and not necessarily use it for new infrastructure. Things like increasing employee benefits (gov't social engineering / "god given right"), cost of maintaining outdated technology because "utilities need to be affordable by everyone!", lobbying, good 'ol fashion profit taking, etc. Why pay for better switches when you're not sure about your labor costs in 5 years, or your own retirement portfolio?
wpietri 10y ago
> How we got to the point where utility-style regulation is seen as the key to ensuring a free and open internet is a true puzzle. It's not even vaguely a puzzle. There used to be a vibrant ISP market. Large existing companies destroyed it. The best case for most Americans is oligopoly; for many, there's effectively a monopoly. Utility-style regulation is not as good as a vibrant market. But it's a lot better than monopolists stifling innovation and extracting monopoly rents.
SkyMarshal 10y ago
>Tomorrow maybe it is price controls in the name of consumer fairness. It's not clear that's a bad thing, or that it's a worse state of affairs than the fast lane/slow lane rent-extraction schemes the telecoms clearly want. Cornering markets (be they capital, IP/copyright, infrastructure, etc) and extracting rent is a primary strategy of multinational corporations these days, and as wealth is increasingly concentrated into their hands, that is an increasingly viable strategy. The telecoms are working toward exactly this with the Internet. >Or maybe it is mandated compliance with government snooping orders in the name of national security. The telecoms running the internet have already brought us that [1]. Net neutrality is orthogonal to that problem. >It might just work great as long as the good guys are in control. But what happens when it changes some day? And, if you think it cannot, then you have far, far more faith in human nature than I can possibly summon. You seem to have far more faith in multinational corporate control of national economic infrastructure and the reliability of self-regulation via market forces than I can summon, especially in light of the continuous failures of both of those ideas in recent years - Enron/CA electrical infrastructure, GFC, IP/copyright, patent trolls, etc. Hard to quantify the following assertion, but many concerned citizens sense the US government is still more accountable to citizens than large corporations are nowadays. The success of the crowd campaign for Net Neutrality is evidence, if not proof, of that. If there's a lesser of two evils here, it's FCC net neutrality rules, not a "free market" for what appears to be an unaccountable oligopoly-owned natural monopoly. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
mavrc 10y ago
> How we got to the point where utility-style regulation is seen as the key to ensuring a free and open internet is a true puzzle. We can break it down quite simply. - Being an ISP is not a high margin business. - ISPs, like any other business, are always seeking ways to make more money. - Charging sites for the privilege of traversing their infrastructure, or charging customers by the sites they load (the "cable TV" model, if you will) is a way to make more money, so ISPs want to do it. - Consumers don't want to be charged more money for the same bits, and neither do the owners of large sites. - Consumers have little to no choice of ISP, because being an ISP is very expensive, and as mentioned, it's pretty low profit (in the grand scheme of things.) Pretty simple, really. Sure, in an ideal world, we'd just be able to change to an ISP that fits our particular political bent (no traffic shaping/filtering/prioritizing for me, thanks!) but that world does not exist. The idea, in short, is that free speech (meaning, in this case, unprioritized w/r/t bits) is more important than ISPs ability to make money. That's not the perfect scenario but it is the most acceptable one, given the world in which we live.
awinder 10y ago
Meanwhile, public utility water outclasses bottled, power infrastructures remain world class, and are fixed during weather catastrophes quickly, roads remain plowed, and kids receive public educations that are competitive with private schools at costs below 15k / year. Americans have been working together to foster functioning and great societies through government for ages now. It's you that wants to test this brave new world.
- scrupulusalbion 10y ago
  > Meanwhile, public utility water outclasses bottled, Bottled water is often just tap water. Flint Michigan has undrinkable water as a result of decades of mismanagement from the entrenched local politicians. The water in my city makes me nauseous to drink, so I have to buy distilled in gallon or larger containers. It is fortunate that most of my water usage is showering. Ah, but these are anecdotes. > Americans have been working together to foster functioning and great societies through government for ages now. It's you that wants to test this brave new world. The victims of the Drug War (primarily poor and minorities) must live ruined lives from this "functioning and great [society] through government for ages now." They are just anecdotes. World-class government sucks.
deleted 10y ago
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amelius 10y ago
http://businesswolf.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/net-neutrality-works-for-me-iksa.in-source.jpg http://businesswolf.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/net-neutr... :)
shmerl 10y ago
> How we got to the point where utility-style regulation is seen as the key to ensuring a free and open internet is a true puzzle. By not preventing monopolization of the ISP market. It might be a natural monopoly, in such case getting to such point is something to be expected. Monopoly must be regulated. You should better ask, why we got there only now, ignoring various monopolistic abuses before.
amyjess 10y ago
You know what? I don't care. Electric companies are regulated the same way, and we all have the freedom to use our electrical devices how we want. And you say "price controls" like that's a bad thing. It's not. Honestly, I wouldn't even be opposed to the federal government just nationalizing every ISP and carrier in the country.
- cobbzilla 10y ago
  Venezuela has done a fantastic job with price controls and nationalizing industry. Have you heard about how wonderful things are in that country?
  - ohashi 10y ago
    And some countries have nationalized healthcare, and have you heard how well they did it?
  - vidarh 10y ago
    By this line of reasoning, any single bankrupt company is proof that all private companies are doomed to failure.
  - Broken_Hippo 10y ago
    You do understand that Venezuela has had a mix of problems, do you not? And that the US is no where near going down that same road. At most, the US could hope for a Nordic Model of socialism, and probably be better off for it.
throwawaysocks 10y ago
The posts below explain the normative policy problems with your view, but fail to point out the biggest flaw: you're simply wrong, as a matter of fact, about what this decision entails. The majority opinion directly addresses your concerns. The majority opinion explicitly and unambiguously REJECTS the line of legal reasoning you claim it upholds, and definitely does NOT grant the FCC "plenary" regulatory authority over the internet. The court carefully points out that is not granting the FCC any authority that was not explicitly granted by the legislative and executive branches. If you don't like net neutrality, take it up with the legislative and executive branches. There is no slippery slope here, any more or less than democracy itself is a slippery slope. In short, your reading of the majority opinion is patently incorrect.
deciplex 10y ago
Once "the bad guys" are in control what makes you think they are going to give a shit about the regulatory tradition of the internet up to that point?

by grellas 10y ago

thenewwazoo 10y ago

I think you're ignoring the very real problems with the Internet infrastructure while you raise alarms about prospective problems. The reason utility-style regulation is a good thing is because the Internet is a utility. And like most other utilities, natural monopolies arise and the free market is distorted. There is already a gun to the head of the Internet, but instead of being putatively controlled by the populous at large it is controlled by entrenched rent-seeking oligopolists who are beholden only to shareholders that do not care about the function of the market. Yes, there is a risk that the regulators will declare any number of rules for any number of reasons. Yes, regulatory capture of regulators is a real problem. The solution to these two problems is not to cede control to multinational corporations. Your lack of faith in human nature should extend to all humans, not just ones who are the apparatus of the state.

cderwin 10y ago
> Your lack of faith in human nature should extend to all humans, not just ones who are the apparatus of the state. It's not that there's some reason to preternaturally trust corporations and to distrust the state, it's that the apparatus of the state is infinitely more powerful. If a corporation acts unethically, you lose the benefits and service it provides. If the state acts unethically, you lose your freedom and/or your life. That's a colossal difference. Likewise, if the choice is between Google controlling access to the internet and Chinese-style regulation controlling access to the internet, there's really no choice at all: who would pick Chinese internet service over Google Fiber? And make no mistake: with utility-style regulation the only boundary between the FCC and the PRC is "the people", and if this year's election has shown anything, they are a fickle and largely ignorant bunch. "Utility-style regulation" isn't an epithet because the internet shouldn't be treated as a utility; it's an epithet because utility regulation over the past hundred years has been absolutely disastrous, enabling the supreme power of corporations, not limiting it. It's really, really sad to see the internet falling into the hands of telecoms and the FCC.
- gumby 10y ago
  Metacomment: I disagree with this comment but was sorry to see it down voted (greyed out) so upvoted it. It doesn't matter at this point why I might disagree with it; it's on topic and did not deserve a down vote just because someone(s) disagreed with it.
- thenewwazoo 10y ago
  > if the choice is between Google controlling access to the internet and Chinese-style regulation You're committing the fallacy of the excluded middle. There is a massive gulf between unregulated behavior of publicly-held companies and authoritarian dictatorship by an unelected body, and the USA is somewhere there in the middle.
  - treehau5 10y ago
    I think this is more along the lines of false dilemma, no? oh I see this is an alias for that. false dilemma, false dichotomy and excluded middle are apparently all the same thing.

gshulegaard 10y ago

I don't know if you meant to or not, but you basically described the classic criticism against using regulation to combat natural monopolies/monopolies in general. In a perfect world, competition and crowd dynamics maintain openness because no single actor can influence the overall market. Unfortunately, in practice we don't see perfect competition which leaves many angles for sufficiently large market participants to influence the overall market. There are examples from relatively recent history where regulation had varying degrees of success curbing monopolistic exploits. So I wouldn't call this a brave new world so much a slight return to the "Trust Busting" regulatory days which more or less went defunct in the last 30 odd years. While I hear your point and I think your reasoning is sound, this particular event happens to be a step in the right direction and I am not keen to throw the baby out with the bath water in this specific instance.

forrestthewoods 10y ago

What? It's not a puzzle at all! Internet access is provided by cable and phone companies. Those companies are utility companies. They have government sponsored monopolies. It was inevitable that the internet access the utility companies provide would eventually see utility-style regulation. Net neutrality sucks. It's a shit solution. The real solution is ISP competition. If consumers were able to choose from a dozen competing ISPs then net neutrality and all this regulation wouldn't be necessary. The true puzzle is how do we enable ISP competition. It's not easy. But it's true solution.

thenewwazoo 10y ago
Is enabling competition in fact the puzzle, though? This is a problem that's been studied intensively for well over a hundred years and solved in lots of other places. It's the same problem as power regulation, water regulation, closed-circuit television regulation, and so on. I don't think the problem is finding a solution at all. I think the problem is convincing citizens that adopting the solutions implemented elsewhere (e.g. decoupling infrastructure from service, community-owned utilities, etc) is a thing worth supporting.
chrishacken 10y ago
I don't think many people realize just how difficult it is to start an ISP and compete. I started an ISP late last year (Shameless plug: https://nepafiber.com https://nepafiber.com ), and I have a new found respect for ISP's. Don't get me wrong, I think most of them do an extremely shitty job at what they do. But starting one requires enormous sums of money. Furthermore, even though we hit profitability after our 4th month in business, raising money has extremely difficult because no one thinks we can weather the storm given how large and powerful other telecoms are.
- forrestthewoods 10y ago
  It requires enormous sums of money to start. But it is also enormously profitable. Time Warner has a profit margin of 97% on their ISP business. Which sounds about right. When profit margins are that high capital finds a way. What capital can't do is chop through red tape, burdensome regulation, and noncompetitive system. Your investors aren't crazy. You challenge titans! But your difficulty isn't going to be technical. It's going to be those titans doing everything in their (significant) power to stop competition. They want to protect their 97% margin after all!

matt4077 10y ago

Welcome to the somewhat repetitive slippery-slope fallacy. You argue like market-based solution are not subject to the darker side of human nature, when, in fact, the conflict of interest, especially in a natural oligopoly like terrestrial internet, is one of it's fundamental pillars.

tunesmith 10y ago
It's yet another argument that insists on ignoring the existence of the Tragedy of the Commons phenomenon. It's just invalid to argue that regulation is never necessary.

hnhire_me 10y ago

> But if your idea of preserving maximum internet freedom is in effect to place a loaded gun to its head and then declare it is not a problem because it is the good guys who control it and who therefore will use it only for good purposes, then you have what you want with utility-style regulation of the internet. The problem is with an oligopoly of effectively 0-2 providers in the majority of the US you really don't have a choice. I'd prefer to have the gun in the hand of the government instead of a corporation who decided to stop investing in infrastructure and just milk the situation. You really need substantial competition (10+ providers) for the free market to function.

kodablah 10y ago
> You really need substantial competition (10+ providers) for the free market to function. This is the most salient point. I would completely agree with OP (and I am generally in favor of fewer regulations) were we all able to choose our providers.
- jethro_tell 10y ago
  Right, It should be obvious, but the market only works if it exists.
cbhl 10y ago
Didn't the lack of providers in the majority of the US happen because municipal governments got to regulate rights-of-way for installing infrastructure (copper telephone and cable wires, fiber optic cables)?
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  Construction season is bad enough maintaining just the infrastructure in the ground already. So that one makes sense to me.
- hnhire_me 10y ago
  > Didn't the lack of providers in the majority of the US happen because municipal governments got to regulate rights-of-way for installing infrastructure (copper telephone and cable wires, fiber optic cables)? Yes. LA 2015 Election: https://ballotpedia.org/Paul_Krekorian https://ballotpedia.org/Paul_Krekorian AT&T - $14,400 Verizon - $7,753 2 of his top 5 contributors were the local ISPs. Unfortunately there aren't any good data sources that provide country-wide coverage of this information but I'd be willing to bet its a very common practice.

superuser2 10y ago

We accept the unbounded authority of law to dictate the terms of the internet, or we accept the unbounded authority of Comcast to dictate the terms of the internet. I have at least token influence over the behavior of my government. I do not have even the illusion of input into Comcast's iptables configuration. In a truly competitive market it would be different. And I'd love to see a truly competive market. But as it stands, the alternative to government isn't freedom, it's unbounded and unchecked power by the cable monopolies to decide what the internet is and isn't. If someone's going to make that call, I'd rather it be someone I can vote against.

cderwin 10y ago
> We accept the unbounded authority of law to dictate the terms of the internet, or we accept the unbounded authority of Comcast to dictate the terms of the internet. Ahh, but we accept the unbounded authority of law to dictate far more than our internet: our property, our freedom, and (unfortunately) our very lives. What reason is there to expect the government not to regulate every other aspect of life with data from the internet? At least Comcast can't do that.
- superuser2 10y ago
  By all accounts the government already has all data from the internet; whether they use it in law enforcement action and whether they regulate ISP's QoS policies are separate matters.
- dv_dt 10y ago
  The law is bounded by the Constitution and the process of evaluating and passing laws in the government. It may be slow, and unpleasant, and difficult to get ones particular views in place, but there is a defined, if imperfect, process to do so. The change process doesn't exist at all if the services that are offered by a company are entirely private, except by customer choice. And if there are too few choices, then well a monopoly ISP could ban encryption on all their offered links, and parse all the data going by for resale to marketers and right back to the government too - except perhaps for those inconvenient government privacy regulations (or other regulatory rules) which may stand in the way.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

If nobody were to step in and instead let Comcast, et al do whatever, the internet would be crap. Pure crap. We can argue how it got that way, but apparently nobody wants to fix that, so it's a pointless argument to have.

Brybry 10y ago

The "bad guys" will remove the regulations and let the existing regional monopolies and duopolies do whatever they want. It's a lot easier and generates less noise than changing the rules to be openly biased while accomplishing the same thing. Just look at what cable companies are doing after regulation requiring unencrypted basic cable service was removed. Companies are requiring users to rent a proprietary DTA; when their TVs already support clear QAM, so there is no valid analog spectrum freeing argument. That deregulation was done by the FCC under different management than it is now (~2012 iirc) and in the declaration all of the commissioners were patting themselves on the back and saying what a huge win it was for consumers. Now, 4 years later, the government is having to look at regulating set top boxes in general so that consumers can actually have choices, own the equipment in their home, and not be locked to a provider.

polarix 10y ago

Have we considered crafting an agency as an information infrastructure policy steward, with the explicit intent to prohibit and prosecute any local and state regulations which would harm the proliferation of information infrastructure. Probably this is not the FCC since its mandate is too broad. But if some such agency had the ability to force municipalities to allow private infrastructure investment, we might start to get the internet we want pretty quickly.

thenewwazoo 10y ago
I read an argument once for nationalizing Internet infrastructure under the auspices of the US Postal Service (which is a constitutionally-mandated public utility), as the Internet serves the same public good as the post did for hundreds of years (and arguably still does). It was an audacious proposal, obviously, but I thought the idea was intriguing.

lubesGordi 10y ago

Gotta love the standard libertarian argument that ignores all facts and argues purely a priori. Hilarious.

AndyMcConachie 10y ago

Perhaps if American ISPs didn't abude their monopoly position we wouldn't need regulation. Unfortunately, they do and will continue to abuse their monopoly positions unless forced to do otherwise. They had their chance to not be jerks, they failed, and now they're regulated. Also, cable companies and ISPs have consistently been rated terribly by consumers in recent years. Most citizens view these companies as utility providers and just want them to deliver cheap consistent service. Title II makes sense in that context.

hackuser 10y ago

> Their power to do this or to forbid that is highly discretionary and essentially boundless. This isn't true; the regulators are restricted by the law and by politics. In the end, the power exists - political power is preserved - the only question is who controls it. For issues important to society, U.S. tradition is that power is allocated democratically. Americans take a vote; power is ultimately in the hands of the voters. Every other potential authority is theoretically just as powerful and arbitrary, and usually in practice is more powerful and arbitrary (IMHO). I agree about the risks; democracy is the worst possible system - until you look at the alternatives. What better alternative is there?

trolly 10y ago

This sophomoric understanding and attitude is mind boggling. So your argument is "...but guys why would we want a utility to be treated like a utility!?" You're entire premise is based around the idea that this regulation is fine because the "good guys" are in charge but what happens when "bad guys" are in charge. There for the only reasonable system is to limit the potential power of the "bad guys" by limiting effectiveness of government to a practically nonexistent state. Well guess what, "bad guys" don't magically limit themselves to government. (For the record here I'm defining "bad guys" as individuals, groups of individuals or organizations that would freely and willingly negatively affect the welfare of large groups of people for their own benefit. This could mean direct monetary gain, indirect gains from those that directly received them, societal gains, ideological or psychological gains from the feeling of imposing your will and views on others, etc. etc.) It doesn't matter if we're talking about politics, commerce, religion, whatever. People like that are drawn to ANY institution that gives them the opportunity to advance their own interests. Hell we all do it to some degree. Some of us are obviously worse than others in both degree and extent. The reason this regulation came about is many see the internet as a utility of great public interest. Meaning widespread, reliable, easy and cheap access to it has the potential of accelerating the growth and prosperity of our society and species as a whole. I hop I don't have to explain to you have worse off we would be without water, electricity, sewage and telephones being treated as public utilities. In this instance that "bad guys" slithered their way not into the government side of the equation, but into business side. One of the only methods of countering "bad guys" in the market is classic free market principles. Free competition would mean "good guys" are able to enter the market and naturally drive the "bad guys" out. Invisible hand and all that jazz. Reality does not often work like that though. It's far more complex. By using tactics to reduce competition such as buying up competitors or forcing them out of business, [mostly indirect] collusion to split up geographic markets, creating artificial barriers to entry, influencing regulation to prevent communities helping themselves, etc, they were able to carve out a pretty comfortable little position for themselves in the economy. That's not even mentioning the fact that even without all that some markets are inherently resistant to free market forces thanks to natural barriers to entry such as the the sheer difficulty and cost of laying physical lines. Now these "bad guys" (note: obviously some excellent [mostly smaller] ISPs remain) are set up in a position to adversely affect the very prosperity of our society increasingly dependent on access to information and communication. I.e. fuck your start up and your ability to reach potential new customers because you're not peered with our "Lead Generation Package™", fuck your farm and any hope you had of learning new techniques because that site can only be reached with "Access Plus™" package, fuck xyz but please enjoy our own content network for Free™. Fuck you and whatever economic influence we might be having on your lives or businesses. Instead we're going to do all this mostly so you watch more of OUR TV SHOWS and ADVERTISEMENTS. If i didn't find it so disturbing I would find it hilarious you used Brave New World in your argument AGAINST these regulations. These regulation are important because with some things it doesn't matter who says them. "DON'T FUCK WITH OUR PROSPERITY BUT FUCKING WITH PEOPLES ABILITY TO SHARE IDEAS AND INFORMATION" That's what it comes down to and it's pretty simple. After all if Hitler himself said "do not eat babies" you wouldn't throw your hands up in response "well looks like we need to ban any future possibility of anti baby eating rules if HITLER can say not to eat them." If the FCC actually starts doing things you're talking THEN lets talk. It's a good thing we live in a system that lets us do that it's it? The idea that there's some "magic bullet" that can limit the "bad guys" indefinitely is frankly juvenile at best. The idea that that "magic bullet" is limiting regulatory powers to non-existent is fucking absurd, "because "bad guys" only choose to slim their way into government" right? The fact of the matter is the only thing that can stop "bad guys" is "good guys" having constant vigilance and a system of checks and balances that enables them to do something about it. In this case the voice of the "good guys" is being heard through sound public policy checking and balancing the power of large incumbent businesses.

fredgrott 10y ago

reminds me of the gun control issue with the same exact philosophy about regulation.

belorn 10y ago

> How we got to the point where utility-style regulation is seen as the key to ensuring a free and open internet is a true puzzle. The answer is not that much of a puzzle. Is very hard to dig water pipes, draw power lines, copper, and fiber without direct cooperation with of the government. Every single utility provider more or less exist because they had cooperation with government, and any current monopoly status is a product of that. Governments, be that US or any other nation, has a responsibility to limit the harm from such monopolies. They created the mess so they got to clean it up. Personally, I would have preferred if the state created monopolies could be out-competed by deregulation of "good" radio frequencies, thus allowing for cheap nationwide wireless ISPs, but the furthest we got with that is the mobile networks and its arguable if it can be said to compete with the last mile monopolies and fiber networks. Speed, latency and coverage being difficult problems to solve with current technology and frequencies regulation.

ascendantlogic 10y ago

This sort of discussion always ignores the fact that the Oligopoly of ISPs have secured last-mile monopolies in a lot of states around the country. There is no free market competition to be had because these companies have explicitly agreed not to compete with each other and to buy their way to local monopolies. What recourse is there in this situation other than to have the federal government strip them of their ability to abuse their position of power?

ultramancool 10y ago
The only alternative to complete control by a monopoly should not be complete control by governments. There is a middle ground and it's proven to be quite functional. Look at how this is solved in other places such as Canada or the UK where they instead force the ISPs to lease lines at reasonable rates. It's caused a massive shift in cost and speed of connections.
- ascendantlogic 10y ago
  The federal government forcing ISPs to do anything falls into the "complete control" category. The "right" thing to do would be to strip states of their ability to enter into abusive, monopolistic agreements to begin with, but then there'd be the massive issue if the federal government stomping all over state sovereignty which is its own minefield of hazards and political suicide.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    There would also be the issues that 1) it doesn't work. The cost of building a last mile network is a massive deterrent to competition even in Europe, which as Americans tend to like to point out in discussions like this, has a far higher population density than the US, which makes it more cost effective, - places that allow it rarely see a proliferation of competitors, and certainly nothing like the EU/EEA competitive situation where having access to dozens of ISPs is the norm most places. 2) if it does work against all odds, there would be massive issues with companies digging up the streets all the time. The "complete control" in the EU is very limited. The details vary by country, but the telecoms directive required each member state to ensure that access to the last mile was guaranteed. Most countries have opted for a solution where the incumbent was forced to separate out the operation and maintenance of the last mile infrastructure, regulated its prices on a cost plus basis and outlaw differentiated prices per provider, and provide access for competitors to lease space for equipment in local exchanges. The rest of the ISP space is mostly unregulated. What has been regulated is access to critical last-mile infrastructure. Nothing but cost stops people from building additional last-mile infrastructure. In the UK, for example, we have numerous fibre ISPs operating their on physical infrastructure in the larger cities, where you can cover a lot of subscribers for relatively low cost, as well as Virgin Media (cable provider) that maintains their own cable infrastructure, and anyone can pay for access to install additional conduits. But the point is you can start a competitive ISPs without it. In fact, due to backhaul (you can get IP handoff of your customers connections at a set of central locations rather than having to put your own equipment in), you can start an ISP very cheaply, and grow by adding equipment in exchanges as it becomes cost effective). In fact, this solution has made control harder. E.g. the court decisions to block the Pirate Bay applies to a set of the largest providers only, presumably because they figured it was the most "bang for the buck" in terms of court costs. But pretty much anyone can choose from any of dozens of other ISPs without such blocks in place if they can't be bothered the hassle of working around it. Similarly the infamous "child porn filters", is something that the largest ISPs have been coerced to "voluntarily" sign up to, but because the government does not have the balls to try to push regulation of it through parliament, anyone who oppose the filters (good reason to: there's no oversight over what exactly is being filtered) can chose from dozens of ISPs that don't use them.

ultramancool 10y ago

Well said. This is why I'm surprised the US hasn't gone the route that both Canada and the UK have: have regulators force ISPs to share lines. This method basically allows government hands only on the minimum required to enforce competition. In a few years with this system in Canada I saw basically a 10x speed increase at very close prices and real competition over which ISP I'd go with. I think this is a far better compromise, allow the market to do its job, just use minimal regulation to force the market to actually exist.

toast0 10y ago
The US did go down that route, in 1996. The FCC decided that only applied to telephone operators and not cable operators; then the telephone operators complained it wasn't fair, and eventually it didn't apply to anything. There were issues with implementation as well, AT&T* would commonly offer lower prices to consumers directly through wholesaling; which makes it pretty hard to compete That said, I would prefer a return to the mandatory access regime as well. * which was mostly SBC at the time
- bhauer 10y ago
  For all of the bumps and warts of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as a consumer I remember the era fondly. My personal Internet connectivity improved more significantly (in terms of percentage improvement over time) in that era than it has since. Since that regime was dismantled, innovation in Internet connectivity has seemed far more stagnant and difficult for upstart companies to disrupt. It is a bit disappointing that we have elected to go down the path we have rather than revisit the model from 1996.
st3v3r 10y ago
The US used to have this. Republicans got rid of it.
- Kadin 10y ago
  Not sure why this is being downvoted; it's pretty much the straightforward truth of what happened. The US had Local Loop Unbundling for copper phone circuits from 1996 to 2005. In 2005 under Kevin Martin, who was a political appointee under G.W. Bush and widely understood to be a friend to the ILECs, the FCC stopped defending the policy and basically gutted it through rulemaking. They could have done then what the FCC is doing now, and either threatened or actually moved forward with reclassification, but decided not to for what were pretty clearly political reasons. These issues are, very obviously, political; anyone claiming otherwise is either being deceitful or deeply in denial.

st3v3r 10y ago

"This is the exact antithesis of the largely hands-off idea of what the government could do with respect to the internet over the past several decades." And the ISPs showed us why that's a terrible idea. Remember, no one was talking about net neutrality until the big ISPs decided they wanted to fuck with the internet.

the8472 10y ago

Internet is a public utility: - you want a dumb pipe that delivers the resource. there are very few distinguishing factors on which suppliers could compete - basic enabling technology on which other amenities depend - installation costs dominate. you're not paying for the photons or electrons - everyone should be served, not just customers in lucrative locations Certainly, internet access does not rank on the same level of maslow's hierarchy of needs as clean tap water, garbage disposal or electricity. But it shares many of the supply properties.

webXL 10y ago
I not only want a dumb pipe, but one that's going to get bigger over time, like it has been, for a reasonable price. I'm not sure how net neutrality is supposed to accomplish that. I don't need my water to taste better over time, or my electricity in different voltages. You can't just declare something a utility without honestly pointing out these differences and addressing potential ramifications.
- Natanael_L 10y ago
  With fiber, that's solved by putting fiber in the ground in installation, to then upgrade the switches at each end as necessary. Kind of like what electric utilities already do with small growing industries.
  - webXL 10y ago
    Okay, but what's the incentive for providers to upgrade the switches?
    - freeone3000 10y ago
      You pay them money.
      - webXL 10y ago
        That's not an incentive for monopolies. They'll take your money and not necessarily use it for new infrastructure. Things like increasing employee benefits (gov't social engineering / "god given right"), cost of maintaining outdated technology because "utilities need to be affordable by everyone!", lobbying, good 'ol fashion profit taking, etc. Why pay for better switches when you're not sure about your labor costs in 5 years, or your own retirement portfolio?

wpietri 10y ago

> How we got to the point where utility-style regulation is seen as the key to ensuring a free and open internet is a true puzzle. It's not even vaguely a puzzle. There used to be a vibrant ISP market. Large existing companies destroyed it. The best case for most Americans is oligopoly; for many, there's effectively a monopoly. Utility-style regulation is not as good as a vibrant market. But it's a lot better than monopolists stifling innovation and extracting monopoly rents.

SkyMarshal 10y ago

>Tomorrow maybe it is price controls in the name of consumer fairness. It's not clear that's a bad thing, or that it's a worse state of affairs than the fast lane/slow lane rent-extraction schemes the telecoms clearly want. Cornering markets (be they capital, IP/copyright, infrastructure, etc) and extracting rent is a primary strategy of multinational corporations these days, and as wealth is increasingly concentrated into their hands, that is an increasingly viable strategy. The telecoms are working toward exactly this with the Internet. >Or maybe it is mandated compliance with government snooping orders in the name of national security. The telecoms running the internet have already brought us that [1]. Net neutrality is orthogonal to that problem. >It might just work great as long as the good guys are in control. But what happens when it changes some day? And, if you think it cannot, then you have far, far more faith in human nature than I can possibly summon. You seem to have far more faith in multinational corporate control of national economic infrastructure and the reliability of self-regulation via market forces than I can summon, especially in light of the continuous failures of both of those ideas in recent years - Enron/CA electrical infrastructure, GFC, IP/copyright, patent trolls, etc. Hard to quantify the following assertion, but many concerned citizens sense the US government is still more accountable to citizens than large corporations are nowadays. The success of the crowd campaign for Net Neutrality is evidence, if not proof, of that. If there's a lesser of two evils here, it's FCC net neutrality rules, not a "free market" for what appears to be an unaccountable oligopoly-owned natural monopoly. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

mavrc 10y ago

> How we got to the point where utility-style regulation is seen as the key to ensuring a free and open internet is a true puzzle. We can break it down quite simply. - Being an ISP is not a high margin business. - ISPs, like any other business, are always seeking ways to make more money. - Charging sites for the privilege of traversing their infrastructure, or charging customers by the sites they load (the "cable TV" model, if you will) is a way to make more money, so ISPs want to do it. - Consumers don't want to be charged more money for the same bits, and neither do the owners of large sites. - Consumers have little to no choice of ISP, because being an ISP is very expensive, and as mentioned, it's pretty low profit (in the grand scheme of things.) Pretty simple, really. Sure, in an ideal world, we'd just be able to change to an ISP that fits our particular political bent (no traffic shaping/filtering/prioritizing for me, thanks!) but that world does not exist. The idea, in short, is that free speech (meaning, in this case, unprioritized w/r/t bits) is more important than ISPs ability to make money. That's not the perfect scenario but it is the most acceptable one, given the world in which we live.

awinder 10y ago

Meanwhile, public utility water outclasses bottled, power infrastructures remain world class, and are fixed during weather catastrophes quickly, roads remain plowed, and kids receive public educations that are competitive with private schools at costs below 15k / year. Americans have been working together to foster functioning and great societies through government for ages now. It's you that wants to test this brave new world.

scrupulusalbion 10y ago
> Meanwhile, public utility water outclasses bottled, Bottled water is often just tap water. Flint Michigan has undrinkable water as a result of decades of mismanagement from the entrenched local politicians. The water in my city makes me nauseous to drink, so I have to buy distilled in gallon or larger containers. It is fortunate that most of my water usage is showering. Ah, but these are anecdotes. > Americans have been working together to foster functioning and great societies through government for ages now. It's you that wants to test this brave new world. The victims of the Drug War (primarily poor and minorities) must live ruined lives from this "functioning and great [society] through government for ages now." They are just anecdotes. World-class government sucks.

deleted 10y ago

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amelius 10y ago

http://businesswolf.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/net-neutrality-works-for-me-iksa.in-source.jpg http://businesswolf.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/net-neutr... :)

shmerl 10y ago

> How we got to the point where utility-style regulation is seen as the key to ensuring a free and open internet is a true puzzle. By not preventing monopolization of the ISP market. It might be a natural monopoly, in such case getting to such point is something to be expected. Monopoly must be regulated. You should better ask, why we got there only now, ignoring various monopolistic abuses before.

amyjess 10y ago

You know what? I don't care. Electric companies are regulated the same way, and we all have the freedom to use our electrical devices how we want. And you say "price controls" like that's a bad thing. It's not. Honestly, I wouldn't even be opposed to the federal government just nationalizing every ISP and carrier in the country.

cobbzilla 10y ago
Venezuela has done a fantastic job with price controls and nationalizing industry. Have you heard about how wonderful things are in that country?
- ohashi 10y ago
  And some countries have nationalized healthcare, and have you heard how well they did it?
- vidarh 10y ago
  By this line of reasoning, any single bankrupt company is proof that all private companies are doomed to failure.
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  You do understand that Venezuela has had a mix of problems, do you not? And that the US is no where near going down that same road. At most, the US could hope for a Nordic Model of socialism, and probably be better off for it.

throwawaysocks 10y ago

The posts below explain the normative policy problems with your view, but fail to point out the biggest flaw: you're simply wrong, as a matter of fact, about what this decision entails. The majority opinion directly addresses your concerns. The majority opinion explicitly and unambiguously REJECTS the line of legal reasoning you claim it upholds, and definitely does NOT grant the FCC "plenary" regulatory authority over the internet. The court carefully points out that is not granting the FCC any authority that was not explicitly granted by the legislative and executive branches. If you don't like net neutrality, take it up with the legislative and executive branches. There is no slippery slope here, any more or less than democracy itself is a slippery slope. In short, your reading of the majority opinion is patently incorrect.

deciplex 10y ago

Once "the bad guys" are in control what makes you think they are going to give a shit about the regulatory tradition of the internet up to that point?