6 ms·

The argument in favor of deregulation of most things has some straight forward logic behind it. Imagine that some major player did begin to act badly. This woul

by rjf72 8y ago

The argument in favor of deregulation of most things has some straight forward logic behind it. Imagine that some major player did begin to act badly. This would enable a competitor to offer a distinct value. Like the GP mentioned some predictions were things like e.g. Microsoft being able to pay Comcast to effectively disable Google search/products. That may be a legal possibility without regulation but it the Huffington Post 'analysis' seems to assume there are no consequences for actions. Google Fiber was a flop in large part because they could not meaningfully distinguish themselves from the competition. Imagine local monopolies start creating meaningfully poor experiences for internet users. They would not be monopolies for long! Some might argue that lower speeds for higher prices were creating "meaningfully poor experiences" for users, but I think there is one important distinction. Let's imagine an upstart competitor comes in and offers some perk, such as lower prices for higher speeds. And the local monopoly ends up matching these offers, as they did in the case of Google Fiber. Is this action perceived as a 'de-crippling' of their system, or as an upgrade of their system? In reality it's almost certainly the former, but in practice it's going to be perceived as the latter. That means they actually gain public props for anti-competitive behavior following what is effectively price-gouging. By contrast if some company is actively and outright blocking a site, then de-crippling would not be seen as an 'upgrade', but instead as what it is -- 'de-crippling.' And so it's likely that the competitor would be the one gaining the public props (and subscriptions). And in reality, it's possible that our incumbent monopoly might not even be able to de-cripple themselves due to a contract with e.g. Microsoft.

Terr_ 8y ago
> Imagine that some major player did begin to act badly. And it was easily detectable and your average consumer can figure out who to attribute it to. Remember when Comcast was finally caught injecting poison packets to sabotage Bittorrent connections? There are far subtler ways to be evil and maintain some plausible deniability against the average consumer, you don't need to sabotage every operation, just enough. Government lawsuits are partly about giving weight to the concept that something screwy is going on. > This would enable a competitor Like that competitor to Comcast, who rapidly -- oh, wait, that didn't pan out. Don't ignore barriers-to-entry, which are hugely significant in the ISP market. P.S.: In addition to the "direct intervention" side, there's also cases of spying and misusing privileged information. While that's on the decline due to increased HTTPS, the legal front is just as important as the technological one.
- roenxi 8y ago
  > Remember when Comcast was finally caught injecting poison packets to sabotage Bittorrent connections? Probably easier to pull that style of thing in under existing fraud legislation than tie it to anything net-specific. Even if there is no objective test, it is reasonably easy to make that sort of lie illegal. Free markets rely on companies being honest about what they sell, and I expect there would be pretty broad support for a law that says companies can't lie about what their products are (if there isn't such a law already). If Comcast wasn't making it clear that they were sabotaging BitTorrent, that should be illigal by virtue of them willfully accepting money while not providing the service.
dnbgfher 8y ago
I think you're ignoring some very basic aspects of the ISP business and taking entirely the wrong lessons away from Google Fiber. There is no cheap way to enter many/most/all of these markets. This isn't a world of cheap VC cash, because there is no chance of winning a lottery. Google of all people couldn't make this make sense. Sure, they would have had a better pitch if they were competing with incumbants who did things like block Google Search. Except it's even more trivial to unblock Google Search than it is to offer better service. This gets worse when you consider the possibility of not outright blocking, but intentionally slowing services. So yeah. If Google couldn't make Google Fiber work, there is no way any new competitor is going to spring out of nowhere. The reality of the competition hasn't changed - incumbants are at a massive advantage even compared to most incumbants. Infrastructure is a massive barrier to newcomers, and any competitive aspects that can be used to differentiate one offer from another can be trivially and immediately matched by the incumbants. And in practice most all of the offers are difficult or impossible to really compare to each other in pratice, so most consumers have to rely mainly on the marketing materials and subjective experiences. And again I've left out a whole other side of the issue, namely the relationships between ISPs and services. This is just an awful system to rely on tradional markets. It uses expensive infrastructure, and the products are indifferentiable in any meaningful way over any period of time.
- simula67 8y ago
  Google built a hugely successful Operating System ( Android ), Web browser ( Chrome ) etc because it was important to them that nobody won these platforms. If someone had monopoly control, they could squeeze Google for a lot of money through Traffic Acquisition Costs. Google currently pays potentially 100s of millions of dollars to Mozilla The same applies to ISPs. Why do you think they are pushing for net neutrality ? Do you think it is out of the goodness of their hearts ? Without net neutrality Google might invest billions into building out a global, fast Internet infrastructure. They may have no choice but to do it, because it is strategic for them to own the entire ad delivery pipeline ( Computers/Phones/Tablets, Operating Systems, ISPs )
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
sonnyblarney 8y ago
"Imagine that some major player did begin to act badly. This would enable a competitor to offer a distinct value. " You need to go ahead and look up 'Monopoly' on Wikipedia. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
mikeash 8y ago
“Imagine local monopolies start creating meaningfully poor experiences for internet users. They would not be monopolies for long!” I don’t have to imagine it. I lived it for years. As the “for years” part hints, it persisted. I moved out of that place years ago but from what I hear it’s still like that. You have a nice theory but it doesn’t seem to match the real world.

by rjf72 8y ago

Terr_ 8y ago

> Imagine that some major player did begin to act badly. And it was easily detectable and your average consumer can figure out who to attribute it to. Remember when Comcast was finally caught injecting poison packets to sabotage Bittorrent connections? There are far subtler ways to be evil and maintain some plausible deniability against the average consumer, you don't need to sabotage every operation, just enough. Government lawsuits are partly about giving weight to the concept that something screwy is going on. > This would enable a competitor Like that competitor to Comcast, who rapidly -- oh, wait, that didn't pan out. Don't ignore barriers-to-entry, which are hugely significant in the ISP market. P.S.: In addition to the "direct intervention" side, there's also cases of spying and misusing privileged information. While that's on the decline due to increased HTTPS, the legal front is just as important as the technological one.

roenxi 8y ago
> Remember when Comcast was finally caught injecting poison packets to sabotage Bittorrent connections? Probably easier to pull that style of thing in under existing fraud legislation than tie it to anything net-specific. Even if there is no objective test, it is reasonably easy to make that sort of lie illegal. Free markets rely on companies being honest about what they sell, and I expect there would be pretty broad support for a law that says companies can't lie about what their products are (if there isn't such a law already). If Comcast wasn't making it clear that they were sabotaging BitTorrent, that should be illigal by virtue of them willfully accepting money while not providing the service.

dnbgfher 8y ago

I think you're ignoring some very basic aspects of the ISP business and taking entirely the wrong lessons away from Google Fiber. There is no cheap way to enter many/most/all of these markets. This isn't a world of cheap VC cash, because there is no chance of winning a lottery. Google of all people couldn't make this make sense. Sure, they would have had a better pitch if they were competing with incumbants who did things like block Google Search. Except it's even more trivial to unblock Google Search than it is to offer better service. This gets worse when you consider the possibility of not outright blocking, but intentionally slowing services. So yeah. If Google couldn't make Google Fiber work, there is no way any new competitor is going to spring out of nowhere. The reality of the competition hasn't changed - incumbants are at a massive advantage even compared to most incumbants. Infrastructure is a massive barrier to newcomers, and any competitive aspects that can be used to differentiate one offer from another can be trivially and immediately matched by the incumbants. And in practice most all of the offers are difficult or impossible to really compare to each other in pratice, so most consumers have to rely mainly on the marketing materials and subjective experiences. And again I've left out a whole other side of the issue, namely the relationships between ISPs and services. This is just an awful system to rely on tradional markets. It uses expensive infrastructure, and the products are indifferentiable in any meaningful way over any period of time.

simula67 8y ago
Google built a hugely successful Operating System ( Android ), Web browser ( Chrome ) etc because it was important to them that nobody won these platforms. If someone had monopoly control, they could squeeze Google for a lot of money through Traffic Acquisition Costs. Google currently pays potentially 100s of millions of dollars to Mozilla The same applies to ISPs. Why do you think they are pushing for net neutrality ? Do you think it is out of the goodness of their hearts ? Without net neutrality Google might invest billions into building out a global, fast Internet infrastructure. They may have no choice but to do it, because it is strategic for them to own the entire ad delivery pipeline ( Computers/Phones/Tablets, Operating Systems, ISPs )
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

sonnyblarney 8y ago

"Imagine that some major player did begin to act badly. This would enable a competitor to offer a distinct value. " You need to go ahead and look up 'Monopoly' on Wikipedia. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly

mikeash 8y ago

“Imagine local monopolies start creating meaningfully poor experiences for internet users. They would not be monopolies for long!” I don’t have to imagine it. I lived it for years. As the “for years” part hints, it persisted. I moved out of that place years ago but from what I hear it’s still like that. You have a nice theory but it doesn’t seem to match the real world.