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Could someone make a pro-repeal argument that doesn't boil down to caring more about which bureaucrat enforces the rules than the rules themselves? Seriously,

Could someone make a pro-repeal argument that doesn't boil down to caring more about which bureaucrat enforces the rules than the rules themselves? Seriously, the whole FTC vs FCC thing is deeply confusing to me. I mean, WTF? I've never seen the public care so much about a battle over jurisdiction between two federal agencies. For this reason, I suspect it's all a bullshit red herring tactic -- the FCC is stripped of power to enforce net neutrality because "the FTC should do it", but then FTC's hands are also tied. Suddenly you can deregulate without actually making a substantive argument for deregulation.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Could someone make a pro-repeal argument that doesn't boil down to caring more about which bureaucrat enforces the rules than the rules themselves? If you believe there's capacity for new entrants to the ISP space, e.g. from satellites [1], then the incumbents' present-day margins are a short-term cost for that long-term gain. If you believe the ISP field is more or less locked, then all the innovation will happen downstream. It would thus make sense to restrict the ISPs' margins in favor of Google, Facebook et al. I'm in that useless place where I see good points on both sides. ISPs need to be able to make money to encourage new entrants. But they shouldn't be able to do so in a way that discourages new entrants downstream. Net neutrality appears to strike that balance. Turning ISPs into utilities does not. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musks-next-mission-internet-satellites-1415390062 https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musks-next-mission-interne...
surecanduder 9y ago
it's because doing "the right thing" the wrong way, as is many people's wont, leaves it open to just this sort of trivally easy meddling in the future. see also: ACA battles
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  Sorry, but I think you're being naive if you think that the people complaining most loudly about an "FCC power grab" are attempting to achieve anything other than deregulation.
  - callmeisnaive 9y ago
    same poster, new throwaway - call me naive all you want, but bear witness to the fact that they did it the wrong way, and people are now fucking with it. I didn't make a moral proclamation, so I'm not sure why you'd think signalling a virtue would be a response. If you set up regulation in a way that can be easily repealed on a power switch, you fucked up, regardless of how you perceive the morality of the situation
    - johnhenry 9y ago
      So, it seems like you're advocating doing "the wrong thing the right way"?
    - throwawayjava 9y ago
      > If you set up regulation in a way that can be easily repealed on a power switch I've been sending emails like the one I sent today for more than a decade. The FCC power grab complaint is rhetoric. If the FTC had enforced, we'd be talking about claims of an FTC power grab. If Congress had stepped up to the plate, we'd be hearing about how we need to "repeal and replace Obamanet". If you think diddling with jurisdictional setup means I won't be sending these emails for another decade, you're naive. That's not how democracy works.
danjoc 9y ago
>Could someone make a pro-repeal argument There is no repeal. Either we do nothing, and nothing changes, or we start applying Title II rules to ISPs that were never there before. As in any debate, the onus is on proponents of NN to explain how a rule change is a good thing, since they are arguing against the status quo.
- yellowapple 9y ago
  "or we start applying Title II rules to ISPs that were never there before." The rules have been there since 1934. Opponents of net neutrality want to pretend that Internet providers are somehow not included in those rules.
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  > Either we do nothing, and nothing changes The entire premise of NN advocacy that things will change. Read the original site.
  - danjoc 9y ago
    I did. FTFA, "In 2015, startups, Internet freedom groups, and 3.7 million commenters won strong net neutrality rules from the US Federal Communication Commission (FCC)." What they leave out is the rules never took effect. That's a lie by omission. Trump put in a new FCC head that blocked the rule changes before they took effect.
    - throwawayjava 9y ago
      I have no idea how that sentence is relevant. You're overly concerned about procedure and ignore the substantive concerns. To repeat myself, the entire premise of NN advocacy that things will change, for consumers and businesses. Not that some procedural fact will or won't change. Not that some rule will or won't be implemented. But that ISPs will change their behavior and that will hurt consumers and businesses. Here's where the site makes this claim: > But if some companies can pay our ISPs to have their content load faster, startups and small businesses that can't pay those fees won't be able to compete. You will kill the open marketplace that has enabled millions of small businesses and created the 5 most valuable companies in America-just to further enrich a few much less valuable cable giants famous for sky-high prices and abysmal customer service. > Internet providers will be able to impose a private tax on every sector of the American economy. > Moreover, under Chairman Pai's plan, ISPs will be able to make it more difficult to access political speech that they don't like. They'll be able to charge fees for website delivery that would make it harder for blogs, nonprofits, artists, and others who can't pay up to have their voices heard. edit: also, this debate has been waging a hell of a lot longer than 2015.
CWuestefeld 9y ago
I'll jump in and take the hate. Reddit is framing the issue like this: Net neutrality ensures that the free market—not big cable—picks the winners and losers This seems like double-think to me. The net neutrality regulations actually prevent me from negotiating an agreement that models my priorities. It forces me to accept everything one-size-fits-all, explicitly preventing a differentiated market from developing in the commodity of bandwidth. There are a couple of examples where I think this is relevant. 1) I imagine a hospital that performs surgery via telepresence. This seems a pretty clear area where I would really want the opportunity to pay more, to ensure that the connection between the surgeon and his robot never even suffers the slightest amount of jitter. This is life-and-death, and I can't see why people would object to a right to pay more for higher-priority for this traffic. 2) A few years ago I recall reading about a cell phone provider who wanted to provide a very basic service level that would allow free use of Facebook and a couple of other apps, but going outside of that narrow box would cost much more. Providing to poor people a way that they can participate in the online community seems like a positive, even if what they get is rather hobbled. The idea that we would say to them, "no, you're not allowed to save your money by buying a lower level of service; if you can't afford the whole enchilada, you can't have anything" seems awfully unfair.
- drostie 9y ago
  For what it's worth, it prevents you from negotiating an agreement that you were not going to win anyways. ISPs are an oligopoly in their present state. If they weren't, then it might make sense to deregulate, but since they are, it doesn't. (1) No, this is fundamentally misunderstanding what happens when monopolistic assholes get to interact with people who are making life-or-death decisions. In those cases the monopolistic assholes always overcharge the crap out of the person who wants, more than to have more money, to be alive. You know how we keep getting news reports about why healthcare costs are higher in the US than anywhere else and it's a problem? It's invariably because there's monopolistic assholes involved -- and congrats, they just got higher due to abandoning net neutrality rules which prevent this from even being a thing. (2) That cell phone provider was probably lying their pants off to you about the marginal cost of going from "you can use a couple apps" to "you can request the whole internet, but your bandwidth will be limited." It's very likely to be negative; you'd seem to have to build out more infrastructure to limit peoples' traffic destinations than you'd do to limit their bandwidth. (Think of the fact that Facebook is all-HTTPS these days, for example, so it's not like you're sniffing those packets without MITMing the whole connection.) To address your earlier point, it's not really double-think. The point is, in the presence of the oligopoly the ISPs are basically Internet countries, with a strange but unelected oligarchic government at the top. We have somewhat more freedom than most to emigrate, but that's about the biggest difference. Net neutrality is an externally imposed free-trade deal among all of them. They are expressing that no, they would instead really like to charge taxes and inspect imports like makeshift customs officers, at their own anti-transparent discretion. They don't want the free-trade deal. It is indeed a valid response to say "well, tough, you're going to have this free-trade deal because the benefits of free trade for everyone in terms of innovation and public good outweigh the benefits those taxes on imports and exports will bring to your shareholders."
grandalf 9y ago
> Could someone make a pro-repeal argument that doesn't boil down to caring more about which bureaucrat enforces the rules than the rules themselves? Net neutrality is the idea that there should be a specific QoS setting required by law. This locks in something that seems sensible based on current protocol usage. How is traffic shaping used by ISPs? It's used to allow more value to be delivered to customers using the same size pipe. It's used to gracefully degrade some less obvious aspects of the internet in favor of keeping others uninterrupted. What do ISPs actually do? Sellers of residential bandwidth are in a business that is actually much more like finance than like a typical technology business. ISPs invest in bandwidth contracts and then they arbitrage the bandwidth based on actual demand. If an ISP expects demand for bandwidth to be strong for 5 years, it may negotiate a 5 year contract with its upstream provider. Risk is being taken, and profits are made when the ISP can re-sell bandwidth for a profit. The service being provided is that the ISP removes the need for consumers to make long-term projections about bandwidth, and removes the need for consumers to buy more bandwidth than they actually need. Now think a bit more precisely about what the actual service an ISP provides is. It's an acceptable connection to the hosts that customers wish to access. If the ISP de-prioritizes youtube.com a bit so that its own VOIP offering can remain crystal clear during heavy usage, that should be completely up to the ISP. If consumers don't appreciate 10ms more lag when accessing youtube, or similar minor degradations, they can switch to another ISP. Now, why does Google support net neutrality? Google wishes to prevent ISPs from offering improved quality services for the "short head" of most popular content. Imagine if you could get ad-free, instant 4K streaming of the top 10000 videos on youtube directly from your ISP. This is where Google makes most of its money from youtube. Google can build a CDN near you, but it can't prioritize the last mile traffic shaping experience in a way that prevents ISPs from exploring business models like the one I've just described. Google can't prevent it without laws like net neutrality, that is. Google wishes to lock in (by law) QoS that supports its own business model. What happens when you load a typical website? Lots of pixel traffic flies back and forth to Google/Doubleclick and market price ads are sold and delivered before you realize what happened. Google's massive profit infrastructure depends on local ISPs sticking only to bandwidth arbitrage. In effect, net neutrality is a regulation very similar to financial regulations. It defines the characteristics of a residential bandwidth circuit, preventing ISPs from defining it their own way. Google wants this because the alternatives threaten Google's cash cow. The problem is, many ISPs invested heavily in last mile buildout with the expectation that they could compete with Google by offering additional value delivered based on locality. All content providers are in the business of creating bits which must be carried across space, and there are some kinds of content where local offers a big advantage. Many of these are yet to be discovered, as local circuit quality has been fairly poor since the origin of the internet. Net neutrality makes it far less likely that any of these will be explored. Net Neutrality is the perfect propaganda name. There is no need for net neutrality because ISPs want to make customers happy, and if they fail to do so, another ISP will. Imagine if we'd had net neutrality in the origin of the internet, ISPs today would be forced to allocate significant priority to Gopher and FTP traffic. The last thing the internet needs is non-technical people creating regulation for it. I'm deeply disappointed that Google has let its own corporate interest drive its propaganda campaign for net neutrality. I have much more positive sentiment for Google than I do for Comcast, but I want Comcast to have a shot at doing something innovative.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Seriously, the whole FTC vs FCC thing is deeply confusing to me. It's also deeply disingenuous, as the anti-neutrality camp doesn't want the FTC to actually act for neutrality, either, and some of the people pushing it also have been in favor the lawsuit (focussed on FTC internet privacy regulations) which (successfully through the Ninth Circuit panel Decision, though it's up for en banco review) resulted in the ruling that the FTC can't regulate many ISP (those that are also Title II common carriers in at other aspect of their business, such as traditional telcos), whether or not the function the FTC is regulating is one for which they are a common carrier.
- Clanan 9y ago
  I've read that the FTC vs. FCC distinction is important because the FTC has a strong history of trustbusting, e.g. AT&T in 1984. Your comment is an interesting political ramification that certainly weakens the above argument.
Clanan 9y ago
I think history shows that the distinction is important; some agencies are well-adapted to handling these issues, while others are not. I'm still undecided, but I've read that the FCC's action in 2010 was a political power grab by friends of the administration (e.g. Google). On the other hand, the FTC has a strong history of trust-busting, e.g. AT&T in 1984, making it the stronger contender for actually handling net neutrality in essence. Whether or not that's true (see other comments), I'm not sure.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> Could someone make a pro-repeal argument that doesn't boil down to caring more about which bureaucrat enforces the rules than the rules themselves? If you believe there's capacity for new entrants to the ISP space, e.g. from satellites [1], then the incumbents' present-day margins are a short-term cost for that long-term gain. If you believe the ISP field is more or less locked, then all the innovation will happen downstream. It would thus make sense to restrict the ISPs' margins in favor of Google, Facebook et al. I'm in that useless place where I see good points on both sides. ISPs need to be able to make money to encourage new entrants. But they shouldn't be able to do so in a way that discourages new entrants downstream. Net neutrality appears to strike that balance. Turning ISPs into utilities does not. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musks-next-mission-internet-satellites-1415390062 https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musks-next-mission-interne...

surecanduder 9y ago

it's because doing "the right thing" the wrong way, as is many people's wont, leaves it open to just this sort of trivally easy meddling in the future. see also: ACA battles

throwawayjava 9y ago
Sorry, but I think you're being naive if you think that the people complaining most loudly about an "FCC power grab" are attempting to achieve anything other than deregulation.
- callmeisnaive 9y ago
  same poster, new throwaway - call me naive all you want, but bear witness to the fact that they did it the wrong way, and people are now fucking with it. I didn't make a moral proclamation, so I'm not sure why you'd think signalling a virtue would be a response. If you set up regulation in a way that can be easily repealed on a power switch, you fucked up, regardless of how you perceive the morality of the situation
  - johnhenry 9y ago
    So, it seems like you're advocating doing "the wrong thing the right way"?
  - throwawayjava 9y ago
    > If you set up regulation in a way that can be easily repealed on a power switch I've been sending emails like the one I sent today for more than a decade. The FCC power grab complaint is rhetoric. If the FTC had enforced, we'd be talking about claims of an FTC power grab. If Congress had stepped up to the plate, we'd be hearing about how we need to "repeal and replace Obamanet". If you think diddling with jurisdictional setup means I won't be sending these emails for another decade, you're naive. That's not how democracy works.

danjoc 9y ago

>Could someone make a pro-repeal argument There is no repeal. Either we do nothing, and nothing changes, or we start applying Title II rules to ISPs that were never there before. As in any debate, the onus is on proponents of NN to explain how a rule change is a good thing, since they are arguing against the status quo.

yellowapple 9y ago
"or we start applying Title II rules to ISPs that were never there before." The rules have been there since 1934. Opponents of net neutrality want to pretend that Internet providers are somehow not included in those rules.
throwawayjava 9y ago
> Either we do nothing, and nothing changes The entire premise of NN advocacy that things will change. Read the original site.
- danjoc 9y ago
  I did. FTFA, "In 2015, startups, Internet freedom groups, and 3.7 million commenters won strong net neutrality rules from the US Federal Communication Commission (FCC)." What they leave out is the rules never took effect. That's a lie by omission. Trump put in a new FCC head that blocked the rule changes before they took effect.
  - throwawayjava 9y ago
    I have no idea how that sentence is relevant. You're overly concerned about procedure and ignore the substantive concerns. To repeat myself, the entire premise of NN advocacy that things will change, for consumers and businesses. Not that some procedural fact will or won't change. Not that some rule will or won't be implemented. But that ISPs will change their behavior and that will hurt consumers and businesses. Here's where the site makes this claim: > But if some companies can pay our ISPs to have their content load faster, startups and small businesses that can't pay those fees won't be able to compete. You will kill the open marketplace that has enabled millions of small businesses and created the 5 most valuable companies in America-just to further enrich a few much less valuable cable giants famous for sky-high prices and abysmal customer service. > Internet providers will be able to impose a private tax on every sector of the American economy. > Moreover, under Chairman Pai's plan, ISPs will be able to make it more difficult to access political speech that they don't like. They'll be able to charge fees for website delivery that would make it harder for blogs, nonprofits, artists, and others who can't pay up to have their voices heard. edit: also, this debate has been waging a hell of a lot longer than 2015.

CWuestefeld 9y ago

I'll jump in and take the hate. Reddit is framing the issue like this: Net neutrality ensures that the free market—not big cable—picks the winners and losers This seems like double-think to me. The net neutrality regulations actually prevent me from negotiating an agreement that models my priorities. It forces me to accept everything one-size-fits-all, explicitly preventing a differentiated market from developing in the commodity of bandwidth. There are a couple of examples where I think this is relevant. 1) I imagine a hospital that performs surgery via telepresence. This seems a pretty clear area where I would really want the opportunity to pay more, to ensure that the connection between the surgeon and his robot never even suffers the slightest amount of jitter. This is life-and-death, and I can't see why people would object to a right to pay more for higher-priority for this traffic. 2) A few years ago I recall reading about a cell phone provider who wanted to provide a very basic service level that would allow free use of Facebook and a couple of other apps, but going outside of that narrow box would cost much more. Providing to poor people a way that they can participate in the online community seems like a positive, even if what they get is rather hobbled. The idea that we would say to them, "no, you're not allowed to save your money by buying a lower level of service; if you can't afford the whole enchilada, you can't have anything" seems awfully unfair.

drostie 9y ago
For what it's worth, it prevents you from negotiating an agreement that you were not going to win anyways. ISPs are an oligopoly in their present state. If they weren't, then it might make sense to deregulate, but since they are, it doesn't. (1) No, this is fundamentally misunderstanding what happens when monopolistic assholes get to interact with people who are making life-or-death decisions. In those cases the monopolistic assholes always overcharge the crap out of the person who wants, more than to have more money, to be alive. You know how we keep getting news reports about why healthcare costs are higher in the US than anywhere else and it's a problem? It's invariably because there's monopolistic assholes involved -- and congrats, they just got higher due to abandoning net neutrality rules which prevent this from even being a thing. (2) That cell phone provider was probably lying their pants off to you about the marginal cost of going from "you can use a couple apps" to "you can request the whole internet, but your bandwidth will be limited." It's very likely to be negative; you'd seem to have to build out more infrastructure to limit peoples' traffic destinations than you'd do to limit their bandwidth. (Think of the fact that Facebook is all-HTTPS these days, for example, so it's not like you're sniffing those packets without MITMing the whole connection.) To address your earlier point, it's not really double-think. The point is, in the presence of the oligopoly the ISPs are basically Internet countries, with a strange but unelected oligarchic government at the top. We have somewhat more freedom than most to emigrate, but that's about the biggest difference. Net neutrality is an externally imposed free-trade deal among all of them. They are expressing that no, they would instead really like to charge taxes and inspect imports like makeshift customs officers, at their own anti-transparent discretion. They don't want the free-trade deal. It is indeed a valid response to say "well, tough, you're going to have this free-trade deal because the benefits of free trade for everyone in terms of innovation and public good outweigh the benefits those taxes on imports and exports will bring to your shareholders."

grandalf 9y ago

> Could someone make a pro-repeal argument that doesn't boil down to caring more about which bureaucrat enforces the rules than the rules themselves? Net neutrality is the idea that there should be a specific QoS setting required by law. This locks in something that seems sensible based on current protocol usage. How is traffic shaping used by ISPs? It's used to allow more value to be delivered to customers using the same size pipe. It's used to gracefully degrade some less obvious aspects of the internet in favor of keeping others uninterrupted. What do ISPs actually do? Sellers of residential bandwidth are in a business that is actually much more like finance than like a typical technology business. ISPs invest in bandwidth contracts and then they arbitrage the bandwidth based on actual demand. If an ISP expects demand for bandwidth to be strong for 5 years, it may negotiate a 5 year contract with its upstream provider. Risk is being taken, and profits are made when the ISP can re-sell bandwidth for a profit. The service being provided is that the ISP removes the need for consumers to make long-term projections about bandwidth, and removes the need for consumers to buy more bandwidth than they actually need. Now think a bit more precisely about what the actual service an ISP provides is. It's an acceptable connection to the hosts that customers wish to access. If the ISP de-prioritizes youtube.com a bit so that its own VOIP offering can remain crystal clear during heavy usage, that should be completely up to the ISP. If consumers don't appreciate 10ms more lag when accessing youtube, or similar minor degradations, they can switch to another ISP. Now, why does Google support net neutrality? Google wishes to prevent ISPs from offering improved quality services for the "short head" of most popular content. Imagine if you could get ad-free, instant 4K streaming of the top 10000 videos on youtube directly from your ISP. This is where Google makes most of its money from youtube. Google can build a CDN near you, but it can't prioritize the last mile traffic shaping experience in a way that prevents ISPs from exploring business models like the one I've just described. Google can't prevent it without laws like net neutrality, that is. Google wishes to lock in (by law) QoS that supports its own business model. What happens when you load a typical website? Lots of pixel traffic flies back and forth to Google/Doubleclick and market price ads are sold and delivered before you realize what happened. Google's massive profit infrastructure depends on local ISPs sticking only to bandwidth arbitrage. In effect, net neutrality is a regulation very similar to financial regulations. It defines the characteristics of a residential bandwidth circuit, preventing ISPs from defining it their own way. Google wants this because the alternatives threaten Google's cash cow. The problem is, many ISPs invested heavily in last mile buildout with the expectation that they could compete with Google by offering additional value delivered based on locality. All content providers are in the business of creating bits which must be carried across space, and there are some kinds of content where local offers a big advantage. Many of these are yet to be discovered, as local circuit quality has been fairly poor since the origin of the internet. Net neutrality makes it far less likely that any of these will be explored. Net Neutrality is the perfect propaganda name. There is no need for net neutrality because ISPs want to make customers happy, and if they fail to do so, another ISP will. Imagine if we'd had net neutrality in the origin of the internet, ISPs today would be forced to allocate significant priority to Gopher and FTP traffic. The last thing the internet needs is non-technical people creating regulation for it. I'm deeply disappointed that Google has let its own corporate interest drive its propaganda campaign for net neutrality. I have much more positive sentiment for Google than I do for Comcast, but I want Comcast to have a shot at doing something innovative.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> Seriously, the whole FTC vs FCC thing is deeply confusing to me. It's also deeply disingenuous, as the anti-neutrality camp doesn't want the FTC to actually act for neutrality, either, and some of the people pushing it also have been in favor the lawsuit (focussed on FTC internet privacy regulations) which (successfully through the Ninth Circuit panel Decision, though it's up for en banco review) resulted in the ruling that the FTC can't regulate many ISP (those that are also Title II common carriers in at other aspect of their business, such as traditional telcos), whether or not the function the FTC is regulating is one for which they are a common carrier.

Clanan 9y ago
I've read that the FTC vs. FCC distinction is important because the FTC has a strong history of trustbusting, e.g. AT&T in 1984. Your comment is an interesting political ramification that certainly weakens the above argument.

Clanan 9y ago

I think history shows that the distinction is important; some agencies are well-adapted to handling these issues, while others are not. I'm still undecided, but I've read that the FCC's action in 2010 was a political power grab by friends of the administration (e.g. Google). On the other hand, the FTC has a strong history of trust-busting, e.g. AT&T in 1984, making it the stronger contender for actually handling net neutrality in essence. Whether or not that's true (see other comments), I'm not sure.