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An interesting counterpoint to the standard arguments equating support for Net Neutrality with support for Title II classification of broadband providers, from

An interesting counterpoint to the standard arguments equating support for Net Neutrality with support for Title II classification of broadband providers, from Ben Thompson: https://stratechery.com/2017/pro-neutrality-anti-title-ii/ https://stratechery.com/2017/pro-neutrality-anti-title-ii/ > Allow me to state this point plainly: I am absolutely in favor of net neutrality... The question at hand, though, is what is the best way to achieve net neutrality? > Any regulatory decision — indeed, any decision period — is about tradeoffs. To choose one course of action is to gain certain benefits and incur certain costs... equally difficult to measure is the inevitable rent-seeking that accompanies regulation, as incumbents find it easier to lobby regulators to foreclose competition instead of winning customers in an open market. > A classic example of this phenomenon is restaurants: who could possibly be against food safety? Then you read about how San Francisco requires 14 permits that take 9 months to issue... and you wonder why anyone opens a restaurant at all. > This argument certainly applies to net neutrality in a far more profound way: the Internet has been the single most important driver of not just economic growth but overall consumer welfare for the last two decades. Given that all of that dynamism has been achieved with minimal regulatory oversight, the default position of anyone concerned about future growth should be maintaining a light touch. After all, regulation always has a cost far greater than what we can see at the moment it is enacted, and given the importance of the Internet, those costs are massively more consequential than restaurants or just about anything else.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
vkou 9y ago
> A classic example of this phenomenon is restaurants: who could possibly be against food safety? Then you read about how San Francisco requires 14 permits that take 9 months to issue... and you wonder why anyone opens a restaurant at all. 13 of those 14 permits are not for food safety, but that doesn't stop op-eds from being deliberately dishonest about it. Most of those regulations have been written in blood - but surely we'll all be better off if we just bulldoze Chesterton's fence!
- theptip 9y ago
  > that doesn't stop op-eds from being deliberately dishonest about it. I think you need to do a lot more work than you have to prove that someone is being deliberately dishonest; otherwise you're just lobbing slander around.
guelo 9y ago
The argument that network neutrality is a new regulatory burden is wrong. Before the 2000s network neutrality existed because the ISPs did not have the network equipment to do deep packet inspection and filtering at large scale. By 2004 the FCC began looking to enforce network neutrality and began testing various legal authorities starting with the Madison River case, and culminating in the 2014 loss in Verizon vs FCC which forced Tom Wheeler to reclassify ISPs as common carriers in order to enforce net neutrality. In other words, the whole history of "the single most important driver of not just economic growth but overall consumer welfare" has occurred under defacto network neutrality.
- Terr_ 9y ago
  Right, I think it's increasingly important to distinguish between (A) the end-result situation of neutral-networks and (B) any specific regulations/laws that are trying to preserve that status-quo. I fear there are a lot of people out there who don't understand the distinction and are confused when they hear that NN is both the status-quo and that NN is new regulation.
- ScottBurson 9y ago
  Great point! I would add that we also had real competition among ISPs in the 1990s, with many small providers. Pai's idea that somehow deregulation will take us back to that time is just lunacy; it's certainly not going to reverse the consolidation that has occurred.
- theptip 9y ago
  I think this is the most convincing counterargument to Thompson's position; to the extent that NN was actually the defacto law of the land, his concerns about adding regulatory burden don't apply.
allenz 9y ago
Thompson's article has been heavily criticized: https://www.wired.com/story/what-an-internet-analyst-got-wrong-about-net-neutrality/ https://www.wired.com/story/what-an-internet-analyst-got-wro... While Title II classification may have some burden, there are no viable alternatives for preserving net neutrality. Ajit Pai isn't interested in making net neutrality better or in making the telecom market more competitive. Further, it's possible to streamline Title II compliance for small ISPs.
- theptip 9y ago
  That's a fairly thorough counterargument to Thompson's position. Some points are solid, but I'm not sure how much to buy this one: > In 2008, the FCC ordered Comcast to stop slowing BitTorrent traffic on its network. Thompson argues that the Comcast case is insignificant because Comcast had stopped throttling BitTorrent by the time the FCC issued its order. But the real importance of the case was a federal-court ruling that the FCC didn’t have authority to regulate Comcast’s internet service, in part because it wasn't a Title II service. So if the FCC didn't have authority to prevent Comcast from throttling Bittorrent in 2008, why didn't they start throttling it as soon as that verdict came in? Title II didn't arrive until 2015, many years after it was decided that Comcast could indeed throttle Bittorrent if they wanted.
  - allenz 9y ago
    This timeline should clear things up: 2008: FCC issues Comcast order citing ancillary jurisdiction under the Communications Act of 1934. 2010: Comcast v. FCC strikes down only that justification. 2010: FCC issues a new Open Internet Order primarily based on section 706 authority. See pages 62-150 of https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-10-201A1.pdf https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-10-201A1.p... 2014: Verizon v. FCC strikes down the Open Internet Order because FCC didn't classify ISPs under Title II. 2015: FCC classifies ISPs under Title II. Tom Wheeler comments that "this is no more a plan to regulate the Internet than the First Amendment is a plan to regulate free speech. They both stand for the same concept."
    - 9y ago
paxy 9y ago
I usually like Ben Thompson's writing, but this article felt so off to me. The basic premise - that enforcing net neutrality will be a trade-off or "burden" on par with onerous safety regulations - is completely flawed. ISPs have to do exactly what they've been doing for decades - nothing. Just leave packets alone and pass them along.
- Feniks 9y ago
  I don't think American ISPs WANT to be dumb pipes though.
- theptip 9y ago
  I think the point he's making is that 1) by taking certain options off the table (e.g. metered pricing), you are removing the ability of new entrants or other challengers to come compete with a new pricing model (as T-Mobile did in the case he highlights in the article), and 2) the stakes are really high; if the regulations are even slightly negative, multiplied across the entire digital economy of the world, getting this wrong could have a major impact. > ISPs have to do exactly what they've been doing for decades - nothing. Just leave packets alone and pass them along. Well, do nothing except for invest billions of dollars in building out new and faster networks to keep up with ever-increasing customer demand for data.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

vkou 9y ago

> A classic example of this phenomenon is restaurants: who could possibly be against food safety? Then you read about how San Francisco requires 14 permits that take 9 months to issue... and you wonder why anyone opens a restaurant at all. 13 of those 14 permits are not for food safety, but that doesn't stop op-eds from being deliberately dishonest about it. Most of those regulations have been written in blood - but surely we'll all be better off if we just bulldoze Chesterton's fence!

theptip 9y ago
> that doesn't stop op-eds from being deliberately dishonest about it. I think you need to do a lot more work than you have to prove that someone is being deliberately dishonest; otherwise you're just lobbing slander around.

guelo 9y ago

The argument that network neutrality is a new regulatory burden is wrong. Before the 2000s network neutrality existed because the ISPs did not have the network equipment to do deep packet inspection and filtering at large scale. By 2004 the FCC began looking to enforce network neutrality and began testing various legal authorities starting with the Madison River case, and culminating in the 2014 loss in Verizon vs FCC which forced Tom Wheeler to reclassify ISPs as common carriers in order to enforce net neutrality. In other words, the whole history of "the single most important driver of not just economic growth but overall consumer welfare" has occurred under defacto network neutrality.

Terr_ 9y ago
Right, I think it's increasingly important to distinguish between (A) the end-result situation of neutral-networks and (B) any specific regulations/laws that are trying to preserve that status-quo. I fear there are a lot of people out there who don't understand the distinction and are confused when they hear that NN is both the status-quo and that NN is new regulation.
ScottBurson 9y ago
Great point! I would add that we also had real competition among ISPs in the 1990s, with many small providers. Pai's idea that somehow deregulation will take us back to that time is just lunacy; it's certainly not going to reverse the consolidation that has occurred.
theptip 9y ago
I think this is the most convincing counterargument to Thompson's position; to the extent that NN was actually the defacto law of the land, his concerns about adding regulatory burden don't apply.

allenz 9y ago

Thompson's article has been heavily criticized: https://www.wired.com/story/what-an-internet-analyst-got-wrong-about-net-neutrality/ https://www.wired.com/story/what-an-internet-analyst-got-wro... While Title II classification may have some burden, there are no viable alternatives for preserving net neutrality. Ajit Pai isn't interested in making net neutrality better or in making the telecom market more competitive. Further, it's possible to streamline Title II compliance for small ISPs.

theptip 9y ago
That's a fairly thorough counterargument to Thompson's position. Some points are solid, but I'm not sure how much to buy this one: > In 2008, the FCC ordered Comcast to stop slowing BitTorrent traffic on its network. Thompson argues that the Comcast case is insignificant because Comcast had stopped throttling BitTorrent by the time the FCC issued its order. But the real importance of the case was a federal-court ruling that the FCC didn’t have authority to regulate Comcast’s internet service, in part because it wasn't a Title II service. So if the FCC didn't have authority to prevent Comcast from throttling Bittorrent in 2008, why didn't they start throttling it as soon as that verdict came in? Title II didn't arrive until 2015, many years after it was decided that Comcast could indeed throttle Bittorrent if they wanted.
- allenz 9y ago
  This timeline should clear things up: 2008: FCC issues Comcast order citing ancillary jurisdiction under the Communications Act of 1934. 2010: Comcast v. FCC strikes down only that justification. 2010: FCC issues a new Open Internet Order primarily based on section 706 authority. See pages 62-150 of https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-10-201A1.pdf https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-10-201A1.p... 2014: Verizon v. FCC strikes down the Open Internet Order because FCC didn't classify ISPs under Title II. 2015: FCC classifies ISPs under Title II. Tom Wheeler comments that "this is no more a plan to regulate the Internet than the First Amendment is a plan to regulate free speech. They both stand for the same concept."
  - 9y ago

paxy 9y ago

I usually like Ben Thompson's writing, but this article felt so off to me. The basic premise - that enforcing net neutrality will be a trade-off or "burden" on par with onerous safety regulations - is completely flawed. ISPs have to do exactly what they've been doing for decades - nothing. Just leave packets alone and pass them along.

Feniks 9y ago
I don't think American ISPs WANT to be dumb pipes though.
theptip 9y ago
I think the point he's making is that 1) by taking certain options off the table (e.g. metered pricing), you are removing the ability of new entrants or other challengers to come compete with a new pricing model (as T-Mobile did in the case he highlights in the article), and 2) the stakes are really high; if the regulations are even slightly negative, multiplied across the entire digital economy of the world, getting this wrong could have a major impact. > ISPs have to do exactly what they've been doing for decades - nothing. Just leave packets alone and pass them along. Well, do nothing except for invest billions of dollars in building out new and faster networks to keep up with ever-increasing customer demand for data.