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1. Even if it prevents some of the worst abuses by incumbents, net neutrality regulation isn't going to create more competition. In fact, if net neutrality reg

by 19guid 9y ago

1. Even if it prevents some of the worst abuses by incumbents, net neutrality regulation isn't going to create more competition. In fact, if net neutrality regulation creates additional compliance costs it might actually reduce competition by increasing the barriers to entry for new ISPs. 2. I think most people would agree that the Internet should generally remain a level playing field for all businesses. However, it's not clear that net neutrality regulation is necessary to maintain such a level playing field. It wasn't necessary in the past. Moreover, there is potential for consumer benefit associated with some kinds of content discrimination, which net neutrality regulation might unjustly prohibit. The reality is that if the US broadband industry was competitive we wouldn't be having this argument. We should fix that first, then see if we still need net neutrality regulation.

DarqWebster 9y ago
Except in this case the regulation is saying that the ISP must just carry bits. It's not forcing the ISP to do something to be compliant, it's forcing the ISP to not do something. So the costs of compliance are low, if not zero. There are short-term consumer benefits, in my country we have zero-rated services, where browsing certain sites costs no data. However this completely undermines the concept of the free market. Any competitor to the zero-rated service has a massive hurdle to overcome, either competing with free, or paying the ISP to have the same deal applied to their service. And there are also cases of abuse. Mobile operators began charging roughly $2 per MB of data for any VOIP traffic, forcing consumers to use standard calls. By refusing to subject ISPs to regulations, we subject the Internet to the whims of the ISPs.
- patrickaljord 9y ago
  > So the costs of compliance are low, if not zero. How could this possibly be zero? If a town's ISP has a bandwidth of 100Gb/s and has a demand of 200Gb/s by their customers, they can: - prioritize certain bits such as live streaming that can't be slown down without degrading user experience, unlike text (current solution) - slow down everything as forced by FCC's Net Neutrality (which would make live streaming unwatchable) - invest in bigger infrastructure and pass the cost down to consumers (which is not zero cost as you claim) So there you go. Another fun fact, for anyone that has lived through the 80's and 90's, the FCC censored TV and radio to hell with list of words, topics and images that could not be used on public broadcasting as it was considered to be public utility. If the FCC considers the internet public utility in order to impose Net Neutrality, they will be granted the same power as they were on tv. If you think twitter censorship sucks, wait for what's coming when Trump or another administration decides to impose similar rules through the FCC with the excuse that it's now a public utility and that using bad words (against politicians or else) at a certain hour is bad for kids. Don't forget that the boss of the FCC is nominated by Trump. People love asking the government for more regulations even though they always end up paying a high price for it. Just be careful what you ask for is all I'm saying.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    And if this was anything other than a question of whether to maintain the status quo, you might have a point or two here.
    - patrickaljord 9y ago
      I'd rather have the status quo than giving full censorship power to a government agency. Not to mention that fiber is getting to more places each day with most of the densest cities covered now. Looks like the problems Net Neutrality was supposed to protect us from are not as grave as they used to be and that the market kind of sorted itself out. Why give the FCC/Trump full censorship power now and force ISPs to jack up their prices just because progress is not happening as fast as some elitists say it should? You think adding more regulations will make fiber be deployed faster?
      - throwanem 9y ago
        Net neutrality is the status quo. No one is talking about adding complex new regulation here but you.
        patrickaljord 9y ago
        > No one is talking about adding complex new regulation here but you. If you follow a bit about what happened the past 100 years of new government agencies rules is that they have _always_ yes, _always_ grown into thousands and thousands of regulations each year. But yeah, I'm sure this time it won't happen... http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0MCZ3FJXJJs/UA7zeOEIanI/AAAAAAAAFl8/N6z1g6k5XS0/s1600/number-pages-regulations-added-to-federal-register-each-year-1936-2012-projected.png http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0MCZ3FJXJJs/UA7zeOEIanI/AAAAAAAAFl...
        throwanem 9y ago
        I don't know any more clear way to state that this regulation isn't new. But I don't think it matters, because I get the vibe that you're super into one of those ideologies that provides a handy, concise, internally consistent answer to any question with which you might find yourself confronted, and it's just a shame that reality so often disagrees. Enjoy your ancap or Randianism or whatever you happen to call it. I'll be over here wishing reality was less complicated than I've consistently observed it to be.
kelnos 9y ago
> 1. Even if it prevents some of the worst abuses by incumbents, net neutrality regulation isn't going to create more competition. Agreed, but net neutrality regulation never claimed it would. The concept of net neutrality accepts the fact that we do not (and cannot) have a free, competitive market for internet access, and tries to ensure that incumbents do not engage in anti-consumer practices that they wouldn't be able to do _if_ it were possible to have sufficient competition. > 2. I think most people would agree that the Internet should generally remain a level playing field for all businesses. > However, it's not clear that net neutrality regulation is necessary to maintain such a level playing field. It's not, but no one seems to have any better ideas. Simply ditching net neutrality is nearly guaranteed to erode that level playing field. I'd be happy to entertain other ideas to maintain it, but no one seems to be presenting those, and the FCC is removing something useful without proposing an effective replacement (or any replacement at all, for that matter). > It wasn't necessary in the past. Wasn't it? Isn't the current net neutrality regulation a direct response to anti-consumer behavior by ISPs? > Moreover, there is potential for consumer benefit associated with some kinds of content discrimination, which net neutrality regulation might unjustly prohibit. The only benefit I can think of is short-term "lock-in" type behavior: stuff like Spotify streaming not counting toward your data cap. All that does is make Spotify more enticing and get users locked in, all due to an entirely synthetic advantage. While this provides a short-term benefit to the customer, it provides long-term negatives as Spotify's competitors are forced out of the market, and new upstart competitors don't stand a chance. Uncapped streaming is a fairly minor thing they could do (some streaming services already do this, and I'm pissed they're able to get away with it) and likely wouldn't hurt competitors enough to kill them, but unwinding net neutrality regulations would allow them to engage in crippling anti-competitive behavior, like making deals with ISPs to charge _their_ customers more for access to other streaming services. > The reality is that if the US broadband industry was competitive we wouldn't be having this argument. We should fix that first, then see if we still need net neutrality regulation. We can't. It is absolutely not in the public's interest to allow just anyone to dig up roadsides and bury cable, and radio spectrum is too scarce a resource to allow robust competition. Do you have any ideas as to how to get around that?
- jscholes 9y ago
thomastjeffery 9y ago
> However, it's not clear that net neutrality regulation is necessary to maintain such a level playing field. Yes it is. > It wasn't necessary in the past. There have been abuses already. I don't expect ISPs will dive into full-blown abuse immediately, but they will ease their way into it. > Moreover, there is potential for consumer benefit associated with some kinds of content discrimination Could you give an example, because I certainly can't think of any. > The reality is that if the US broadband industry was competitive we wouldn't be having this argument. We should fix that first, then see if we still need net neutrality regulation. Absolutely! That is exactly the problem I was trying to express. To abolish net neutrality while the market is in this state is clearly a bad idea. Abolishing net neutrality will not do anything to promote a competition, so it's important that we start finding things that will.

by 19guid 9y ago

DarqWebster 9y ago

Except in this case the regulation is saying that the ISP must just carry bits. It's not forcing the ISP to do something to be compliant, it's forcing the ISP to not do something. So the costs of compliance are low, if not zero. There are short-term consumer benefits, in my country we have zero-rated services, where browsing certain sites costs no data. However this completely undermines the concept of the free market. Any competitor to the zero-rated service has a massive hurdle to overcome, either competing with free, or paying the ISP to have the same deal applied to their service. And there are also cases of abuse. Mobile operators began charging roughly $2 per MB of data for any VOIP traffic, forcing consumers to use standard calls. By refusing to subject ISPs to regulations, we subject the Internet to the whims of the ISPs.

patrickaljord 9y ago
> So the costs of compliance are low, if not zero. How could this possibly be zero? If a town's ISP has a bandwidth of 100Gb/s and has a demand of 200Gb/s by their customers, they can: - prioritize certain bits such as live streaming that can't be slown down without degrading user experience, unlike text (current solution) - slow down everything as forced by FCC's Net Neutrality (which would make live streaming unwatchable) - invest in bigger infrastructure and pass the cost down to consumers (which is not zero cost as you claim) So there you go. Another fun fact, for anyone that has lived through the 80's and 90's, the FCC censored TV and radio to hell with list of words, topics and images that could not be used on public broadcasting as it was considered to be public utility. If the FCC considers the internet public utility in order to impose Net Neutrality, they will be granted the same power as they were on tv. If you think twitter censorship sucks, wait for what's coming when Trump or another administration decides to impose similar rules through the FCC with the excuse that it's now a public utility and that using bad words (against politicians or else) at a certain hour is bad for kids. Don't forget that the boss of the FCC is nominated by Trump. People love asking the government for more regulations even though they always end up paying a high price for it. Just be careful what you ask for is all I'm saying.
- throwanem 9y ago
  And if this was anything other than a question of whether to maintain the status quo, you might have a point or two here.
  - patrickaljord 9y ago
    I'd rather have the status quo than giving full censorship power to a government agency. Not to mention that fiber is getting to more places each day with most of the densest cities covered now. Looks like the problems Net Neutrality was supposed to protect us from are not as grave as they used to be and that the market kind of sorted itself out. Why give the FCC/Trump full censorship power now and force ISPs to jack up their prices just because progress is not happening as fast as some elitists say it should? You think adding more regulations will make fiber be deployed faster?
    - throwanem 9y ago
      Net neutrality is the status quo. No one is talking about adding complex new regulation here but you.
      - patrickaljord 9y ago
        > No one is talking about adding complex new regulation here but you. If you follow a bit about what happened the past 100 years of new government agencies rules is that they have _always_ yes, _always_ grown into thousands and thousands of regulations each year. But yeah, I'm sure this time it won't happen... http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0MCZ3FJXJJs/UA7zeOEIanI/AAAAAAAAFl8/N6z1g6k5XS0/s1600/number-pages-regulations-added-to-federal-register-each-year-1936-2012-projected.png http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0MCZ3FJXJJs/UA7zeOEIanI/AAAAAAAAFl...
        throwanem 9y ago
        I don't know any more clear way to state that this regulation isn't new. But I don't think it matters, because I get the vibe that you're super into one of those ideologies that provides a handy, concise, internally consistent answer to any question with which you might find yourself confronted, and it's just a shame that reality so often disagrees. Enjoy your ancap or Randianism or whatever you happen to call it. I'll be over here wishing reality was less complicated than I've consistently observed it to be.

kelnos 9y ago

> 1. Even if it prevents some of the worst abuses by incumbents, net neutrality regulation isn't going to create more competition. Agreed, but net neutrality regulation never claimed it would. The concept of net neutrality accepts the fact that we do not (and cannot) have a free, competitive market for internet access, and tries to ensure that incumbents do not engage in anti-consumer practices that they wouldn't be able to do _if_ it were possible to have sufficient competition. > 2. I think most people would agree that the Internet should generally remain a level playing field for all businesses. > However, it's not clear that net neutrality regulation is necessary to maintain such a level playing field. It's not, but no one seems to have any better ideas. Simply ditching net neutrality is nearly guaranteed to erode that level playing field. I'd be happy to entertain other ideas to maintain it, but no one seems to be presenting those, and the FCC is removing something useful without proposing an effective replacement (or any replacement at all, for that matter). > It wasn't necessary in the past. Wasn't it? Isn't the current net neutrality regulation a direct response to anti-consumer behavior by ISPs? > Moreover, there is potential for consumer benefit associated with some kinds of content discrimination, which net neutrality regulation might unjustly prohibit. The only benefit I can think of is short-term "lock-in" type behavior: stuff like Spotify streaming not counting toward your data cap. All that does is make Spotify more enticing and get users locked in, all due to an entirely synthetic advantage. While this provides a short-term benefit to the customer, it provides long-term negatives as Spotify's competitors are forced out of the market, and new upstart competitors don't stand a chance. Uncapped streaming is a fairly minor thing they could do (some streaming services already do this, and I'm pissed they're able to get away with it) and likely wouldn't hurt competitors enough to kill them, but unwinding net neutrality regulations would allow them to engage in crippling anti-competitive behavior, like making deals with ISPs to charge _their_ customers more for access to other streaming services. > The reality is that if the US broadband industry was competitive we wouldn't be having this argument. We should fix that first, then see if we still need net neutrality regulation. We can't. It is absolutely not in the public's interest to allow just anyone to dig up roadsides and bury cable, and radio spectrum is too scarce a resource to allow robust competition. Do you have any ideas as to how to get around that?

jscholes 9y ago

thomastjeffery 9y ago

> However, it's not clear that net neutrality regulation is necessary to maintain such a level playing field. Yes it is. > It wasn't necessary in the past. There have been abuses already. I don't expect ISPs will dive into full-blown abuse immediately, but they will ease their way into it. > Moreover, there is potential for consumer benefit associated with some kinds of content discrimination Could you give an example, because I certainly can't think of any. > The reality is that if the US broadband industry was competitive we wouldn't be having this argument. We should fix that first, then see if we still need net neutrality regulation. Absolutely! That is exactly the problem I was trying to express. To abolish net neutrality while the market is in this state is clearly a bad idea. Abolishing net neutrality will not do anything to promote a competition, so it's important that we start finding things that will.