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Thank you for calling my attention to the Communications Act. And you condense my thoughts well; one of my two arguments is that communication is too abstract a

Thank you for calling my attention to the Communications Act. And you condense my thoughts well; one of my two arguments is that communication is too abstract a thing to be regulated or abridged by the interstate commerce clause. I.e. for interstate communication the federal government shouldn't be able to touch it due to the 1st amendment. I'm not necessarily as opposed to foreign communication being under commerce. But repealing net neutrality is still a step towards this, and in my FCC comment I even acknowledge that I don't support repeal for the official, republican stated reason. I agree with you about end-to-end encryption but the Qwest Communications thing I think helps make my first point. We shouldn't want the federal government having such economic and legal leverage in this space. My second reason for opposing net neutrality deals with > the problem with the free market argument. ISPs are a monopoly and should be regulated or government owned. Just at municipal and regional levels. To do this you have to allow money transactions higher up in the network topology. To make the market work this way with regional ISPs you have to be able to charge where the content is coming from as well as charging for consumption at the edges. FCC's net neutrality would codify into law a system that makes that legally difficult. I.e. we shouldn't pass a rule today that makes a more ideal system in the future more difficult to develop. > Endpoint marking packets of QoS has nothing to do with network neutrality. Moreover, in practice most if not all residential ISPs ignore the QoS bits... But not their own QoS bits for telephone and cable services. Likewise why not let Vonage or Netflix pay for this special treatment?

AnthonyMouse 9y ago
> one of my two arguments is that communication is too abstract a thing to be regulated or abridged by the interstate commerce clause. You have to separate the speech from the infrastructure. It's no argument to say that a law requiring UPS and FedEx to deliver packages to all households (instead of only white households) is a free speech violation, just because packages contain documents and other media. The law isn't proscribing any particular content, it's only requiring common carriers to be common carriers. > I agree with you about end-to-end encryption but the Qwest Communications thing I think helps make my first point. We shouldn't want the federal government having such economic and legal leverage in this space. The source of the leverage isn't legislation, it's jurisdiction. ISPs have huge physical infrastructure investments that they can't just pick up and move to another country if the US government is leaning on them, so they fold. > To do this you have to allow money transactions higher up in the network topology. This I think is the root of the misunderstanding. It makes no sense to have Joe pay Comcast directly and have Joe pay Comcast by way of Netflix. All that does is create unneeded transaction costs for no reason, compared with having Joe pay the total amount going to Comcast directly to Comcast. It's only a subterfuge calculated to disguise the fact that the Comcast aims to leverage their ISP monopoly to damage competitors in video content. Netflix has to pay Comcast actual money, but Comcast-video nominally paying Comcast-ISP is just moving money between two pockets in the same pants. They want to give their own video service an unfair advantage. There is no reason to engage in that inefficient money laundering triangle unless there is something dubious going on that requires artificial complexity to obfuscate. > But not their own QoS bits for telephone and cable services. Likewise why not let Vonage or Netflix pay for this special treatment? Because it allows the monopoly abuse subterfuge, as opposed to having the ISP sell the feature directly to the end users. Which apparently nobody wants enough for it to even be offered.
- benlorenzetti 9y ago
  First I want to say you are encouraging me to research :) > You have to separate the speech from the infrastructure. Its no argument to say that a law requiring UPS and FedEx to deliver packages to all households...is a free speech violation, just because packages contain documents and other media...common carriers. I would argue that communications are an abstract thing, not subject interstate commerce or federal regulations upon common carriers. I would argue the abstractness, an idea exists at once everywhere, there is no transporting over state lines that needs to be done. There is not even a net flow of electrons and the infrastructure is static. Everything facilitated by the ISP has this nature by default unless it is otherwise sold as some specific product you can buy like a movie. And the point of this argument would be to reduce the legal surface area for lawsuits and executive enforcement by the federal government on ISPs. > The source of leverage isn't legislation, it's jurisdiction. I am not sure if I understand. ISPs have so many laws governing them and are so big (causal relationship?) that they are bound to be always in violation if the government looks hard enough. It would benefit freedom of speech to reduce both. > This I think is the root of the misunderstanding. Sorry I am starting to confuse different responses, but the misunderstanding seems to be...I am not arguing about whether NN would help address some shortcomings of the current setup. I am saying NN would further entrench the current state of affairs and could prevent a better one from ever being built.
  - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
    > I would argue that communications are an abstract thing, not subject interstate commerce or federal regulations upon common carriers. I would argue the abstractness, an idea exists at once everywhere, there is no transporting over state lines that needs to be done. There is not even a net flow of electrons and the infrastructure is static. Everything facilitated by the ISP has this nature by default unless it is otherwise sold as some specific product you can buy like a movie. If there is nothing of material existence crossing state lines then we should be able to just cut the fiber at every state border without causing any trouble, right? You're arguing that it is inappropriate to regulate interstate couriers because ideas are very abstract. But the thing being regulated isn't the ideas. It's the equivalent of prohibiting interstate electric utilities from charging monopoly prices to any press company that needs electricity to run their printing press, when the electric utility owns their own competing press company. It's not a regulation of words or bits or electrons, it's a regulation of utility companies and anti-competitive business contracts. > And the point of this argument would be to reduce the legal surface area for lawsuits and executive enforcement by the federal government on ISPs. The FCC is part of the executive branch. Congress has given it the authority to regulate telecommunications companies. The executive doesn't need any particular rules to put pressure on companies because it has the authority to make new ones at any time. Moreover, network neutrality rules shouldn't provide any leverage to the executive because there is nothing to punish unless the company is violating network neutrality. I completely agree that a rule should always either be enforced or repealed, but the solution to that in a case where the rule is meritorious is the first one. If the rules are actually enforced then there won't be everyday violations for the executive to use as a pretext to punish other behavior. > I am not sure if I understand. ISPs have so many laws governing them and are so big (causal relationship?) that they are bound to be always in violation if the government looks hard enough. It would benefit freedom of speech to reduce both. If that is your goal then you have to go to the root. The reason ISPs have to be heavily regulated is that they lack vigorous competition, which prevents market forces from doing the work for you. In order to have fewer regulations you need more competition. This is not a chicken and egg problem. You don't need one before the other because you can do both at the same time. What you can't do is to get rid of the regulations without first having effective competition, or the result will be monopoly abuse. And we know of effective solutions, such as local loop unbundling. Or even better, municipal-owned last mile fiber leased per-customer to multiple competing ISPs. > I am not arguing about whether NN would help address some shortcomings of the current setup. I am saying NN would further entrench the current state of affairs and could prevent a better one from ever being built. The problem with that argument is that NN violations are not a prerequisite to any positive outcome, so prohibiting them causes no harm. In a competitive market they wouldn't even happen because none of the hundreds of competing ISPs would individually have enough market power to extract any such concessions from anyone. In that case NN rules would be unnecessary but still harmless because they would only be redundant with market forces. What you're after is potentially meritorious, but you have to do things in a sensible order. You can't remove the anti-monopoly rules until after you first remove the monopoly. But you don't have to remove the anti-monopoly rules in order to remove the monopoly -- so start there and then object to NN as an unnecessary redundancy after you've successfully eliminated its justification.

AnthonyMouse 9y ago

> one of my two arguments is that communication is too abstract a thing to be regulated or abridged by the interstate commerce clause. You have to separate the speech from the infrastructure. It's no argument to say that a law requiring UPS and FedEx to deliver packages to all households (instead of only white households) is a free speech violation, just because packages contain documents and other media. The law isn't proscribing any particular content, it's only requiring common carriers to be common carriers. > I agree with you about end-to-end encryption but the Qwest Communications thing I think helps make my first point. We shouldn't want the federal government having such economic and legal leverage in this space. The source of the leverage isn't legislation, it's jurisdiction. ISPs have huge physical infrastructure investments that they can't just pick up and move to another country if the US government is leaning on them, so they fold. > To do this you have to allow money transactions higher up in the network topology. This I think is the root of the misunderstanding. It makes no sense to have Joe pay Comcast directly and have Joe pay Comcast by way of Netflix. All that does is create unneeded transaction costs for no reason, compared with having Joe pay the total amount going to Comcast directly to Comcast. It's only a subterfuge calculated to disguise the fact that the Comcast aims to leverage their ISP monopoly to damage competitors in video content. Netflix has to pay Comcast actual money, but Comcast-video nominally paying Comcast-ISP is just moving money between two pockets in the same pants. They want to give their own video service an unfair advantage. There is no reason to engage in that inefficient money laundering triangle unless there is something dubious going on that requires artificial complexity to obfuscate. > But not their own QoS bits for telephone and cable services. Likewise why not let Vonage or Netflix pay for this special treatment? Because it allows the monopoly abuse subterfuge, as opposed to having the ISP sell the feature directly to the end users. Which apparently nobody wants enough for it to even be offered.

benlorenzetti 9y ago
First I want to say you are encouraging me to research :) > You have to separate the speech from the infrastructure. Its no argument to say that a law requiring UPS and FedEx to deliver packages to all households...is a free speech violation, just because packages contain documents and other media...common carriers. I would argue that communications are an abstract thing, not subject interstate commerce or federal regulations upon common carriers. I would argue the abstractness, an idea exists at once everywhere, there is no transporting over state lines that needs to be done. There is not even a net flow of electrons and the infrastructure is static. Everything facilitated by the ISP has this nature by default unless it is otherwise sold as some specific product you can buy like a movie. And the point of this argument would be to reduce the legal surface area for lawsuits and executive enforcement by the federal government on ISPs. > The source of leverage isn't legislation, it's jurisdiction. I am not sure if I understand. ISPs have so many laws governing them and are so big (causal relationship?) that they are bound to be always in violation if the government looks hard enough. It would benefit freedom of speech to reduce both. > This I think is the root of the misunderstanding. Sorry I am starting to confuse different responses, but the misunderstanding seems to be...I am not arguing about whether NN would help address some shortcomings of the current setup. I am saying NN would further entrench the current state of affairs and could prevent a better one from ever being built.
- AnthonyMouse 9y ago
  > I would argue that communications are an abstract thing, not subject interstate commerce or federal regulations upon common carriers. I would argue the abstractness, an idea exists at once everywhere, there is no transporting over state lines that needs to be done. There is not even a net flow of electrons and the infrastructure is static. Everything facilitated by the ISP has this nature by default unless it is otherwise sold as some specific product you can buy like a movie. If there is nothing of material existence crossing state lines then we should be able to just cut the fiber at every state border without causing any trouble, right? You're arguing that it is inappropriate to regulate interstate couriers because ideas are very abstract. But the thing being regulated isn't the ideas. It's the equivalent of prohibiting interstate electric utilities from charging monopoly prices to any press company that needs electricity to run their printing press, when the electric utility owns their own competing press company. It's not a regulation of words or bits or electrons, it's a regulation of utility companies and anti-competitive business contracts. > And the point of this argument would be to reduce the legal surface area for lawsuits and executive enforcement by the federal government on ISPs. The FCC is part of the executive branch. Congress has given it the authority to regulate telecommunications companies. The executive doesn't need any particular rules to put pressure on companies because it has the authority to make new ones at any time. Moreover, network neutrality rules shouldn't provide any leverage to the executive because there is nothing to punish unless the company is violating network neutrality. I completely agree that a rule should always either be enforced or repealed, but the solution to that in a case where the rule is meritorious is the first one. If the rules are actually enforced then there won't be everyday violations for the executive to use as a pretext to punish other behavior. > I am not sure if I understand. ISPs have so many laws governing them and are so big (causal relationship?) that they are bound to be always in violation if the government looks hard enough. It would benefit freedom of speech to reduce both. If that is your goal then you have to go to the root. The reason ISPs have to be heavily regulated is that they lack vigorous competition, which prevents market forces from doing the work for you. In order to have fewer regulations you need more competition. This is not a chicken and egg problem. You don't need one before the other because you can do both at the same time. What you can't do is to get rid of the regulations without first having effective competition, or the result will be monopoly abuse. And we know of effective solutions, such as local loop unbundling. Or even better, municipal-owned last mile fiber leased per-customer to multiple competing ISPs. > I am not arguing about whether NN would help address some shortcomings of the current setup. I am saying NN would further entrench the current state of affairs and could prevent a better one from ever being built. The problem with that argument is that NN violations are not a prerequisite to any positive outcome, so prohibiting them causes no harm. In a competitive market they wouldn't even happen because none of the hundreds of competing ISPs would individually have enough market power to extract any such concessions from anyone. In that case NN rules would be unnecessary but still harmless because they would only be redundant with market forces. What you're after is potentially meritorious, but you have to do things in a sensible order. You can't remove the anti-monopoly rules until after you first remove the monopoly. But you don't have to remove the anti-monopoly rules in order to remove the monopoly -- so start there and then object to NN as an unnecessary redundancy after you've successfully eliminated its justification.