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>general opposition to regulation, because compliance costs burden smaller firms more, raising the barrier to entry In your favor, I'm aware of at least one re

>general opposition to regulation, because compliance costs burden smaller firms more, raising the barrier to entry In your favor, I'm aware of at least one regional co-op ISP in Minnesota that either shut down or sold out due to the reporting/compliance overhead that Title 2 placed on them. This isn't a conspiracy theory, this is simple organizational dynamics - larger corporations are able to absorb larger regulatory burdens that smaller players cannot. This is something that NN advocates seem to have a very hard time accepting. The law that was shot down wasn't "net neutrality", it was classifying ISPs whole of Title 2 (which is a ginormous blob of legislation, minus a couple of "forbeared" provisions) which had a specific form of net neutrality as one of its many provisions. >reduces choices for consumers This, I don't get. How so? What choice is being meaningfully restricted by the requirement that you don't discriminate based on source or destination? >Most Americans have less than 3 ISPs. This may be true depending on how you restrict which ISPs you're referring to. Mobile carriers are not realistic internet providers for daily home use because of draconian bandwidth caps and other forms of fuckery (like restricting video streams to 480p) even when "unlimited", and that's not getting into the latency/reliability issues that make things like online gaming difficult. Most people will have a telephone company and a cable TV company to choose from, with a smattering of third party DSL carriers (that still require the telephone company's lines), and some very niche options like fixed wireless (see latency/reliability) or satellite (high pings and bandwidth caps). ---- I do think it's interesting that most of the doomsaying has yet to come true. I don't think there's any demand for these tightly segregated services NN people seem to think we'll get, or else we would have seen meaningful, industry-wide pushes in that direction, and as for speeds, they've only been increasing.

pitaj 7y ago
> > reduces choices for consumers > This, I don't get. How so? What choice is being meaningfully restricted by the requirement that you don't discriminate based on source or destination? Let's say an ISP offers a plan allowing their users to have full-speed access to partner video steam providers, and slower access to their main competitors. This plan is half the price of their main plan, which gives full-speed access to everyone. The plan I described would be illegal, as I understand it, under NN. This means that that choice had been removed as an option for consumers. There are many consumers who would use this plan: people who do very little video streaming at all, people who use their partner's video streaming service, and people who use very small competing services which fly under the radar of their throttling. Those people now have to pay more because a choice that would have benefitted them is illegal.
- lovehashbrowns 7y ago
  But that's deceptive; it's cheaper for the consumer because it's a plan subsidized by the partnered video streaming services. But in the long-term, that reduces choices in different areas, e.g. fewer video stream providers because the providers that can't afford to pay off ISPs find it harder to gain an audience. Something already exacerbated by the network effect. And ISPs that have those plans have an additional guaranteed income stream, whereas smaller ISPs that can't get income from partnered websites have less money to compete with and a higher hill to climb. Additionally, ISPs aren't falling behind in speeds, available plans, and costs because they don't have money. They're profitable. They have money. What we need is a combination of NN and municipal ISPs that provide actual competition.
tzs 7y ago
> This is something that NN advocates seem to have a very hard time accepting. The law that was shot down wasn't "net neutrality", it was classifying ISPs whole of Title 2 (which is a ginormous blob of legislation, minus a couple of "forbeared" provisions) which had a specific form of net neutrality as one of its many provisions It was something like 700 forbeared provisions. There were only 8 pages of regulations in the 2015 Open Internet Order. If you recall seeing Pai and some members of Congress waving around a 400 page document and claiming it was the 2015 Open Internet Order, what they were waving about was actually 8 pages of the Order, plus a long analysis of the legal history of net neutrality, responses to comments, analysis of the FCC's authority to regulate, and things like that.
- Karunamon 7y ago
  The open internet order and the title 2 reclassification are two different things. After they were sued and lost the ability to enforce the order, they moved forward with reclassification.
  - tzs 7y ago
    I believe you may be thinking of the 2010 Open Internet Order. That was the net neutrality order that was struck down in court. The court said that Section 706 did not provide sufficient authority for the regulation, but Title II would if ISPs were reclassified. The Wheeler FCC set about to restoring net neutrality consistent with the court's ruling. Wheeler proposed doing so without reclassification by basically keeping those things that the court had not had a problem with and dropping those things that needed Title II. The main such thing dropped was the ban against paid prioritization. In that proposal, he also asked for comments on reclassification. The comments overwhelmingly supported reclassification and he went with that, issuing the 2015 Open Internet order, which reclassified ISPs under Title II with most Title II provisions forborne and imposed net neutrality.

pitaj 7y ago

> > reduces choices for consumers > This, I don't get. How so? What choice is being meaningfully restricted by the requirement that you don't discriminate based on source or destination? Let's say an ISP offers a plan allowing their users to have full-speed access to partner video steam providers, and slower access to their main competitors. This plan is half the price of their main plan, which gives full-speed access to everyone. The plan I described would be illegal, as I understand it, under NN. This means that that choice had been removed as an option for consumers. There are many consumers who would use this plan: people who do very little video streaming at all, people who use their partner's video streaming service, and people who use very small competing services which fly under the radar of their throttling. Those people now have to pay more because a choice that would have benefitted them is illegal.

lovehashbrowns 7y ago
But that's deceptive; it's cheaper for the consumer because it's a plan subsidized by the partnered video streaming services. But in the long-term, that reduces choices in different areas, e.g. fewer video stream providers because the providers that can't afford to pay off ISPs find it harder to gain an audience. Something already exacerbated by the network effect. And ISPs that have those plans have an additional guaranteed income stream, whereas smaller ISPs that can't get income from partnered websites have less money to compete with and a higher hill to climb. Additionally, ISPs aren't falling behind in speeds, available plans, and costs because they don't have money. They're profitable. They have money. What we need is a combination of NN and municipal ISPs that provide actual competition.

tzs 7y ago

> This is something that NN advocates seem to have a very hard time accepting. The law that was shot down wasn't "net neutrality", it was classifying ISPs whole of Title 2 (which is a ginormous blob of legislation, minus a couple of "forbeared" provisions) which had a specific form of net neutrality as one of its many provisions It was something like 700 forbeared provisions. There were only 8 pages of regulations in the 2015 Open Internet Order. If you recall seeing Pai and some members of Congress waving around a 400 page document and claiming it was the 2015 Open Internet Order, what they were waving about was actually 8 pages of the Order, plus a long analysis of the legal history of net neutrality, responses to comments, analysis of the FCC's authority to regulate, and things like that.

Karunamon 7y ago
The open internet order and the title 2 reclassification are two different things. After they were sued and lost the ability to enforce the order, they moved forward with reclassification.
- tzs 7y ago
  I believe you may be thinking of the 2010 Open Internet Order. That was the net neutrality order that was struck down in court. The court said that Section 706 did not provide sufficient authority for the regulation, but Title II would if ISPs were reclassified. The Wheeler FCC set about to restoring net neutrality consistent with the court's ruling. Wheeler proposed doing so without reclassification by basically keeping those things that the court had not had a problem with and dropping those things that needed Title II. The main such thing dropped was the ban against paid prioritization. In that proposal, he also asked for comments on reclassification. The comments overwhelmingly supported reclassification and he went with that, issuing the 2015 Open Internet order, which reclassified ISPs under Title II with most Title II provisions forborne and imposed net neutrality.