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Listen to the latest "Fifth Column" podcast where they interview this "evil" Ajit Pai guy. I think he makes a strong case that regulating monopolies is the role

Listen to the latest "Fifth Column" podcast where they interview this "evil" Ajit Pai guy. I think he makes a strong case that regulating monopolies is the role of the FTC or state's attorney generals and not the FCC and there is no real market failure here. http://wethefifth.com/ http://wethefifth.com/ https://play.radiopublic.com/the-fifth-column-analysis-commentary-sedition-WJbONJ/ep/s1!c0579c6ffffa8b3950dddad8fb1ab29cc5a45cb4 https://play.radiopublic.com/the-fifth-column-analysis-comme...

dragonwriter 9y ago
> I think he makes a strong case that regulating monopolies is the role of the FTC He's echoing the industry on this, the industry that has (succesfully, so far, though the full 9th Circuit will be rehearing the issue) also argued that the FTC is barred by law from regulating them. Here's the position. To the FCC: “You shouldn't regulate anti-competitive behavior in our industry, even as a means to serve the clear and precise purposes the FCC is given in statute, because competition in general is the FTC’s job.” To the FTC: “You can't regulate anti-competitive behavior in our industry, because most major participants are common carriers whether or not broadband is a Title II service, and you are prohibited from regulating common carriers even in their non-common-carrier activities, and any regulation you adopted that only applied to non-common-carrier participants would just concentrate more power in the common carriers.”
s73ver_ 9y ago
That's a completely different topic altogether, though. Even if there were 100 ISPs, Net Neutrality would still be an issue. When there was plenty of competition among long distance phone carriers (back when people needed to worry about that kind of thing), there still was "phone neutrality", meaning that no phone operator could slow down or otherwise interfere with your call based on who you were calling, what provider they had, or anything like that. Net Neutrality is the exact same thing.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  It's not the exact same thing. Phone calls are predominantly direct, 1:1 exchanges (in some cases you may have a conference call with a few other parties on the line). No single party could be responsible for a huge majority of the load on a phone network without seeing proportional billing; that is, if you wanted to have 300 simultaneous calls from your office, you had to pay for 300 open phone lines. Since the internet is instead a broadcast medium, it is much easier for big players to saturate the lines. ISPs naturally believe that _someone_ should be paying for what they interpret as the "extra load" from these big players, and that's not entirely unreasonable when you consider that some households will use 30Mbit/s streaming content to 4 devices for 10 hours per day, and the next household, which pays the same monthly internet bill, uses 5Mbit/s or less to read predominantly-text based sites for 2 hours per day. Net neutrality is fundamentally large internet companies looking to keep their costs down by using government force to prevent ISPs from charging them usage-based "carriage fees" or similar. Ultimately I don't know if that's good or bad, but I think it's important we recognize the fight over net neutrality for what it is: an arm wrestling match between industrial juggernauts to decide who is going to pick up the tab for the infrastructure that makes the net tick. The consumer is virtually a non-entity and just watching from the bleachers.
  - sjolsen 9y ago
    >Phone calls are predominantly direct, 1:1 exchanges >Since the internet is instead a broadcast medium, it is much easier for big players to saturate the lines The Internet is _not_ a broadcast medium. Data transfer over the Internet is by nature peer-to-peer. >ISPs naturally believe that _someone_ should be paying for what they interpret as the "extra load" from these big players Someone _is_ paying for the load for big players: the consumers who are accessing their sites. >some households will use 30Mbit/s streaming content to 4 devices for 10 hours per day, and the next household, which pays the same monthly internet bill, uses 5Mbit/s or less to read predominantly-text based sites for 2 hours per day 30 Mb/s residential service already costs more than 5 Mb/s residential service. >Net neutrality is fundamentally large internet companies looking to keep their costs down by using government force to prevent ISPs from charging them usage-based "carriage fees" or similar. Net neutrality is fundamentally a consumer protection preventing ISPs from leveraging their natural monopolies on last-mile service to enact rent-seeking policies. Whether ISPs charge consumers directly for access to, say, competing content providers ("Watch Turner Classic Movies for free with Spectrum Basic 10 Mb/s, or upgrade to Spectrum Premium 10 Mb/s for only $19.99 per month to access Netflix, Hulu, and HBO!"), or they charge those content providers extra to peer their traffic and those content providers fold that into subscription fees, we're the ones getting bent over the barrel.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> I think he makes a strong case that regulating monopolies is the role of the FTC He's echoing the industry on this, the industry that has (succesfully, so far, though the full 9th Circuit will be rehearing the issue) also argued that the FTC is barred by law from regulating them. Here's the position. To the FCC: “You shouldn't regulate anti-competitive behavior in our industry, even as a means to serve the clear and precise purposes the FCC is given in statute, because competition in general is the FTC’s job.” To the FTC: “You can't regulate anti-competitive behavior in our industry, because most major participants are common carriers whether or not broadband is a Title II service, and you are prohibited from regulating common carriers even in their non-common-carrier activities, and any regulation you adopted that only applied to non-common-carrier participants would just concentrate more power in the common carriers.”

s73ver_ 9y ago

That's a completely different topic altogether, though. Even if there were 100 ISPs, Net Neutrality would still be an issue. When there was plenty of competition among long distance phone carriers (back when people needed to worry about that kind of thing), there still was "phone neutrality", meaning that no phone operator could slow down or otherwise interfere with your call based on who you were calling, what provider they had, or anything like that. Net Neutrality is the exact same thing.

cookiecaper 9y ago
It's not the exact same thing. Phone calls are predominantly direct, 1:1 exchanges (in some cases you may have a conference call with a few other parties on the line). No single party could be responsible for a huge majority of the load on a phone network without seeing proportional billing; that is, if you wanted to have 300 simultaneous calls from your office, you had to pay for 300 open phone lines. Since the internet is instead a broadcast medium, it is much easier for big players to saturate the lines. ISPs naturally believe that _someone_ should be paying for what they interpret as the "extra load" from these big players, and that's not entirely unreasonable when you consider that some households will use 30Mbit/s streaming content to 4 devices for 10 hours per day, and the next household, which pays the same monthly internet bill, uses 5Mbit/s or less to read predominantly-text based sites for 2 hours per day. Net neutrality is fundamentally large internet companies looking to keep their costs down by using government force to prevent ISPs from charging them usage-based "carriage fees" or similar. Ultimately I don't know if that's good or bad, but I think it's important we recognize the fight over net neutrality for what it is: an arm wrestling match between industrial juggernauts to decide who is going to pick up the tab for the infrastructure that makes the net tick. The consumer is virtually a non-entity and just watching from the bleachers.
- sjolsen 9y ago
  >Phone calls are predominantly direct, 1:1 exchanges >Since the internet is instead a broadcast medium, it is much easier for big players to saturate the lines The Internet is _not_ a broadcast medium. Data transfer over the Internet is by nature peer-to-peer. >ISPs naturally believe that _someone_ should be paying for what they interpret as the "extra load" from these big players Someone _is_ paying for the load for big players: the consumers who are accessing their sites. >some households will use 30Mbit/s streaming content to 4 devices for 10 hours per day, and the next household, which pays the same monthly internet bill, uses 5Mbit/s or less to read predominantly-text based sites for 2 hours per day 30 Mb/s residential service already costs more than 5 Mb/s residential service. >Net neutrality is fundamentally large internet companies looking to keep their costs down by using government force to prevent ISPs from charging them usage-based "carriage fees" or similar. Net neutrality is fundamentally a consumer protection preventing ISPs from leveraging their natural monopolies on last-mile service to enact rent-seeking policies. Whether ISPs charge consumers directly for access to, say, competing content providers ("Watch Turner Classic Movies for free with Spectrum Basic 10 Mb/s, or upgrade to Spectrum Premium 10 Mb/s for only $19.99 per month to access Netflix, Hulu, and HBO!"), or they charge those content providers extra to peer their traffic and those content providers fold that into subscription fees, we're the ones getting bent over the barrel.