4 ms·

I don't think I fully understand the argument for net neutrality. I try to think about it from a few different perspectives: Broadband intensive services like

by bko 12y ago

I don't think I fully understand the argument for net neutrality. I try to think about it from a few different perspectives: Broadband intensive services like Netflix: I think a problem that they face is that their connection is often slow, not only intentionally, but also because developing infrastructure is expensive. Why would an ISP bother building out the infrastructure if they can't extract a higher value from those that it most benefits (Netflix)? In fact, Netflix thinks it's worth it to pay Comcast directly. If that was not beneficial, I don't see why Netflix would have done so. Sure, they would probably prefer to get that service for free, but it must be mutually beneficial for both parties to go along. If Netflix were not allowed to make sure a deal with a company like Comcast, would that really benefit anyone? Smaller Websites: There is the risk that ISPs try extracting a toll but I think it may not be worth it a lot of the time for the ISP. I think this fear is overblown, although I could be wrong. Consumers that don't use broadband extensive services: Why should those consumers be subsidizing those that use broadband heavy services? Consumers using broadband extensive services: Why should Netflix not be allowed to help subsidize the cost of providing broadband? Why should this fall solely on the individual? Government: The obvious concerns of more governmental control of the internet. I could imagine a scenario where Netflix was not allowed to pay Comcast directly for increased bandwidth. Instead, Netflix would spend that money to lobby politicians to force Comcast to build out their infrastructure. I don't see how that's a better scenario than currently exists. I think a better solution to very little competition in ISPs would be to decrease the barriers it takes to compete. Further regulation would only increase the barriers. Netflix paying Comcast: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/after-netflix-pays-comcast-speeds-improve-65/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/after-... Starting an ISP is Really Hard: http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/04/one-big-reason-we-lack-internet-competition-starting-an-isp-is-really-hard/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/04/one-big-reason-we-la...

benmathes 12y ago
Short Answer: Communications industries are different, and too important. The information they carry is, like journalism, a 4th estate to democracy. An econ101 approach to that industry breeds consolidated information empires that influence policy, society, and public discourse to the point of control. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/books/review/Leonhardt-t.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/books/review/Leonhardt-t.h...
- adventured 12y ago
  Everything you just said about controlling policy, society, public discourse - applies to governments that show authoritarian tendencies, exactly as the US Government does these days. Except with the government it's radically worse. They have the guns, and the legal 'right' (might) to spy on you and criminalize what you do if they see fit - or you know, use your porn habits to blackmail you as the NSA chief suggested doing. They also already substantially control education in countless ways. So a violent central government that likes to murder innocent people by the thousands overseas, with a rising police state domestically with military weapons given to them by the Feds, and a mentality to wage perpetual war, and spy on all citizens and acquire all information they can in any way they can without any regard for the Constitution or privacy ... and you want to give them more power over the biggest free speech platform in world history - oh yeah, this is going to end real well.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- webXL 12y ago
  Communications industries are different, and too important. More important than shelter, food and energy? We draw a line as to what the government should provide/subsidize/control and what the private sector provides in those sectors. The information they carry is, like journalism, a 4th estate to democracy. If the 4th estate is a check on government, why would we want the government to decide what constituted it? Please don't conflate a first amendment issue with this conflict between content providers and ISPs.
  - benmathes 12y ago
    Yes, similar to shelter, food, and energy in that they are fundamental infrastructure. I'm sorry I wasn't more clear. You are right: the analogy breaks down on the level of mechanism of preservation. I attempted to be more general. Specifically: Journalism is a check on public and private coercion, but the mechanism is free speech. Common Carrier regulation is a check on (largely) private coercion. The mechanism is monopoly prevention (originally monopoly rejection, via AT&T breakup).
zaphar 12y ago
Why would an ISP bother building out the infrastructure if they can't extract a higher value from those that it most benefits (Netflix)? It's not only Netflix that benefits. It's also the consumer. Our family for instance watches almost all of their Video via Netflix, Amazon, and Youtube. We don't pay for a cable package. Saying it most benefits Netflix does a disservice to my family. I don't want Cable TV. I want Netflix. Comcast wants to deny me Netflix unless Netflix agrees to pay them more money. Looking at it from my perspective. I'm paying Comcast for the ability to stream Netflix. They advertise to me as having the fastest speeds for streaming video. And yet when I request Netflix they refuse to do what's necessary to allow me to stream Netflix. Consumers that don't use broadband extensive services: Why should those consumers be subsidizing those that use broadband heavy services? Why Indeed? If Comcast want's to offer less broadband intensive plans they have every right to. If they want to charge me higher prices for a more broadband intensive plan then more power to them. The issue is that they degrade my service so they can extract a price from Netflix when I purchased the right to stream from Netflix from them. I think a better solution to very little competition in ISPs would be to decrease the barriers it takes to compete. Further regulation would only increase the barriers. It's almost impossible to decrease those barriers without regulation. Running wires to every home is expensive and the first one there almost always wins. The reasons why broadband is a natural monopoly have been discussed in depth on this site. Those reasons have not changed. The real crux of the problem here is that large ISP's like comcast are selling one thing to their consumers: a certain amount of bandwidth to any site on the internet and then purposely failing to deliver that bandwidth to the customer and blaming it on someone else.
- bko 12y ago
  Yes, running wires to homes is expensive. By making it less lucrative and tying the hands of those that build those wires, you're not exactly encouraging competition. I'd imagine if ISPs abused this rent-seeking, companies like Netflix and Google would actually become interested in building out their own infrastructure. However Netflix would be less inclined to do so if it were not able to favor their service over competitors. One decision is to treat ISPs like a public utility which is where I think the US is heading. In my experience, though, services brought to me by the government are often lack-luster. Google Fiber: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/10/arkansas-firms-look-at-fiber-as-nets-future/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/10/arkansas-fir...
zanny 12y ago
> Why would an ISP bother building out the infrastructure if they can't extract a higher value from those that it most benefits (Netflix)? Netflix is not getting the benefit, the end user is. That is the demand side of things. They can and do charge more for higher bandwidth, and Netflix will require more than the national average to reliably stream at 1080p. Netflix only exists to fill that need, and the ISP exists to fill that users bandwidth need. It is not Netflix's direct need. > it must be mutually beneficial for both parties to go along. It is. Netflix makes more profit off working Internet from Comcast than they lose paying the bribe. But we lose, the consumers, because Netflix is getting a fast lane now, and sets a precedent that ISPs can hold ransom their bandwidth from anyone. > I think this fear is overblown, although I could be wrong. It takes no effort on their part to set up their routing to have everyone in a slow lane unless you pay the fee, and they have no motivation not to, because when smaller websites are slow, users stop visiting them, they don't drop their ISP over it. > Why should those consumers be subsidizing those that use broadband heavy services? They should not / aren't. At least in terms of month to month server upkeep. In terms of infrastructure wire, you pay the same taxes that maintain the roads if you drive a hundred miles a year as the guy who drives ten thousand miles a month. Previous models have showed that the overhead of calculating physical infrastructure usage (ie, power) is hard, and unless the per-unit volume is valuable enough it is not worth the bureaucracy. > Why should Netflix not be allowed to help subsidize the cost of providing broadband? Why should this fall solely on the individual? Because they are not subsidizing at all. End user will pay the same for Internet regardless of how much money content providers throw at ISPs because the vast majority are in monopoly positions and can do whatever they want up until the point users just drop service all together. > I don't see how that's a better scenario than currently exists. If it were the case that ISPs were the underdog here, because compelled by legislation to spend their private earnings to build cable that they cannot dictate price on and must lease compulsively, then you would have an argument. But current ISPs have the opposite. They inherited their infrastructure from public works and other telecom companies, where the laying of cable was heavily subsidized by taxpayer money, and in some cases (verizon) they were given money to invest in infrastructure that they then ran away with and faced no consequences. > decrease the barriers it takes to compete. There are only three ways to do this. One, you have "wire lanes" where anyone can run wire across the nation. This means starting an ISP no longer has the insurmountable mountain of regulation surrounding breaking ground, and you can just buy fiber, run it, and hook up each end user that wants it on an individual basis from the street corner. The downside is you end up with tons of redundant infrastructure investments, and wire itself is mad pricey. This means that the industry as a whole is inefficient, due to the redundancy. The good news would be that with laying cable being an actual option, entrenched players would have a motivation to lease what they have at reasonable rates to avoid someone else investing heavily in competing in the infrastructure. But it is also completely infeasible. There is no way to set up New York City or rural Arkansas in a way to just let anyone lay fiber cable. The investment alone in getting to that point vastly eclipses the costs of just laying a public fiber channel owned the state that anyone can hook up to. Option two is compulsory leasing, which is what Title 2 is in effect. If nobody can lay wire and actually compete with entrenched interests, you cannot have price competition on the rental rates of wire in the ground. So you have to use legislation to force it. Option three is either eminent domain of the telecommunications infrastructure or the build out of a publicly maintained fiber network. It could emulate the power companies, where regional switching stations are mandated to maintain the network within their jurisdiction using funds from acting as a private ISP, and the networks just need to be interconnected by mandate. This means that the wire is effectively free to use, and you just have to hook in servers and provide bandwidth. The problem there is that you need junction points where you connect to the backbone, and adding one to an already established network is on the order of complexity as laying wire itself. So it is either that, or wholly public ISPs with taxpayer funded Internet service. The downside to that is that you can look at all public infrastructure in the US and see how well that went given our current organization of government. The roads in many states are decrepit, the power grid is woefully in need of an upgrade, water services all over the place are being sold off privately and are also in deteriorating condition, and at least pedestrian rail is on the brink of death (no idea about commercial rail, but the prevalence of trucks in the PA area tells me it is not doing too well either). Our local, state, and federal government have collectively and decisively shown that given the political leanings and organization of state we in the US have, that none of them can maintain infrastructure, let alone improve it in the way we desperately need our Internet infrastructure improved over time, not just kept in its current state.
legohead 12y ago
Netflix pays for its bandwidth, like any internet service. If Netflix were to offer some ridiculous streaming option like 50k video, customers simply wouldn't be able to stream it because the customer is only paying its ISP for 10mbit or whatever. If the customer really wants this 50k video, it will have to pay the ISP to upgrade. In this way, the ISP is making its money off of Netflix already.

by bko 12y ago

benmathes 12y ago

Short Answer: Communications industries are different, and too important. The information they carry is, like journalism, a 4th estate to democracy. An econ101 approach to that industry breeds consolidated information empires that influence policy, society, and public discourse to the point of control. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/books/review/Leonhardt-t.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/books/review/Leonhardt-t.h...

adventured 12y ago
Everything you just said about controlling policy, society, public discourse - applies to governments that show authoritarian tendencies, exactly as the US Government does these days. Except with the government it's radically worse. They have the guns, and the legal 'right' (might) to spy on you and criminalize what you do if they see fit - or you know, use your porn habits to blackmail you as the NSA chief suggested doing. They also already substantially control education in countless ways. So a violent central government that likes to murder innocent people by the thousands overseas, with a rising police state domestically with military weapons given to them by the Feds, and a mentality to wage perpetual war, and spy on all citizens and acquire all information they can in any way they can without any regard for the Constitution or privacy ... and you want to give them more power over the biggest free speech platform in world history - oh yeah, this is going to end real well.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
webXL 12y ago
Communications industries are different, and too important. More important than shelter, food and energy? We draw a line as to what the government should provide/subsidize/control and what the private sector provides in those sectors. The information they carry is, like journalism, a 4th estate to democracy. If the 4th estate is a check on government, why would we want the government to decide what constituted it? Please don't conflate a first amendment issue with this conflict between content providers and ISPs.
- benmathes 12y ago
  Yes, similar to shelter, food, and energy in that they are fundamental infrastructure. I'm sorry I wasn't more clear. You are right: the analogy breaks down on the level of mechanism of preservation. I attempted to be more general. Specifically: Journalism is a check on public and private coercion, but the mechanism is free speech. Common Carrier regulation is a check on (largely) private coercion. The mechanism is monopoly prevention (originally monopoly rejection, via AT&T breakup).

zaphar 12y ago

Why would an ISP bother building out the infrastructure if they can't extract a higher value from those that it most benefits (Netflix)? It's not only Netflix that benefits. It's also the consumer. Our family for instance watches almost all of their Video via Netflix, Amazon, and Youtube. We don't pay for a cable package. Saying it most benefits Netflix does a disservice to my family. I don't want Cable TV. I want Netflix. Comcast wants to deny me Netflix unless Netflix agrees to pay them more money. Looking at it from my perspective. I'm paying Comcast for the ability to stream Netflix. They advertise to me as having the fastest speeds for streaming video. And yet when I request Netflix they refuse to do what's necessary to allow me to stream Netflix. Consumers that don't use broadband extensive services: Why should those consumers be subsidizing those that use broadband heavy services? Why Indeed? If Comcast want's to offer less broadband intensive plans they have every right to. If they want to charge me higher prices for a more broadband intensive plan then more power to them. The issue is that they degrade my service so they can extract a price from Netflix when I purchased the right to stream from Netflix from them. I think a better solution to very little competition in ISPs would be to decrease the barriers it takes to compete. Further regulation would only increase the barriers. It's almost impossible to decrease those barriers without regulation. Running wires to every home is expensive and the first one there almost always wins. The reasons why broadband is a natural monopoly have been discussed in depth on this site. Those reasons have not changed. The real crux of the problem here is that large ISP's like comcast are selling one thing to their consumers: a certain amount of bandwidth to any site on the internet and then purposely failing to deliver that bandwidth to the customer and blaming it on someone else.

bko 12y ago
Yes, running wires to homes is expensive. By making it less lucrative and tying the hands of those that build those wires, you're not exactly encouraging competition. I'd imagine if ISPs abused this rent-seeking, companies like Netflix and Google would actually become interested in building out their own infrastructure. However Netflix would be less inclined to do so if it were not able to favor their service over competitors. One decision is to treat ISPs like a public utility which is where I think the US is heading. In my experience, though, services brought to me by the government are often lack-luster. Google Fiber: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/10/arkansas-firms-look-at-fiber-as-nets-future/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/10/arkansas-fir...

zanny 12y ago

> Why would an ISP bother building out the infrastructure if they can't extract a higher value from those that it most benefits (Netflix)? Netflix is not getting the benefit, the end user is. That is the demand side of things. They can and do charge more for higher bandwidth, and Netflix will require more than the national average to reliably stream at 1080p. Netflix only exists to fill that need, and the ISP exists to fill that users bandwidth need. It is not Netflix's direct need. > it must be mutually beneficial for both parties to go along. It is. Netflix makes more profit off working Internet from Comcast than they lose paying the bribe. But we lose, the consumers, because Netflix is getting a fast lane now, and sets a precedent that ISPs can hold ransom their bandwidth from anyone. > I think this fear is overblown, although I could be wrong. It takes no effort on their part to set up their routing to have everyone in a slow lane unless you pay the fee, and they have no motivation not to, because when smaller websites are slow, users stop visiting them, they don't drop their ISP over it. > Why should those consumers be subsidizing those that use broadband heavy services? They should not / aren't. At least in terms of month to month server upkeep. In terms of infrastructure wire, you pay the same taxes that maintain the roads if you drive a hundred miles a year as the guy who drives ten thousand miles a month. Previous models have showed that the overhead of calculating physical infrastructure usage (ie, power) is hard, and unless the per-unit volume is valuable enough it is not worth the bureaucracy. > Why should Netflix not be allowed to help subsidize the cost of providing broadband? Why should this fall solely on the individual? Because they are not subsidizing at all. End user will pay the same for Internet regardless of how much money content providers throw at ISPs because the vast majority are in monopoly positions and can do whatever they want up until the point users just drop service all together. > I don't see how that's a better scenario than currently exists. If it were the case that ISPs were the underdog here, because compelled by legislation to spend their private earnings to build cable that they cannot dictate price on and must lease compulsively, then you would have an argument. But current ISPs have the opposite. They inherited their infrastructure from public works and other telecom companies, where the laying of cable was heavily subsidized by taxpayer money, and in some cases (verizon) they were given money to invest in infrastructure that they then ran away with and faced no consequences. > decrease the barriers it takes to compete. There are only three ways to do this. One, you have "wire lanes" where anyone can run wire across the nation. This means starting an ISP no longer has the insurmountable mountain of regulation surrounding breaking ground, and you can just buy fiber, run it, and hook up each end user that wants it on an individual basis from the street corner. The downside is you end up with tons of redundant infrastructure investments, and wire itself is mad pricey. This means that the industry as a whole is inefficient, due to the redundancy. The good news would be that with laying cable being an actual option, entrenched players would have a motivation to lease what they have at reasonable rates to avoid someone else investing heavily in competing in the infrastructure. But it is also completely infeasible. There is no way to set up New York City or rural Arkansas in a way to just let anyone lay fiber cable. The investment alone in getting to that point vastly eclipses the costs of just laying a public fiber channel owned the state that anyone can hook up to. Option two is compulsory leasing, which is what Title 2 is in effect. If nobody can lay wire and actually compete with entrenched interests, you cannot have price competition on the rental rates of wire in the ground. So you have to use legislation to force it. Option three is either eminent domain of the telecommunications infrastructure or the build out of a publicly maintained fiber network. It could emulate the power companies, where regional switching stations are mandated to maintain the network within their jurisdiction using funds from acting as a private ISP, and the networks just need to be interconnected by mandate. This means that the wire is effectively free to use, and you just have to hook in servers and provide bandwidth. The problem there is that you need junction points where you connect to the backbone, and adding one to an already established network is on the order of complexity as laying wire itself. So it is either that, or wholly public ISPs with taxpayer funded Internet service. The downside to that is that you can look at all public infrastructure in the US and see how well that went given our current organization of government. The roads in many states are decrepit, the power grid is woefully in need of an upgrade, water services all over the place are being sold off privately and are also in deteriorating condition, and at least pedestrian rail is on the brink of death (no idea about commercial rail, but the prevalence of trucks in the PA area tells me it is not doing too well either). Our local, state, and federal government have collectively and decisively shown that given the political leanings and organization of state we in the US have, that none of them can maintain infrastructure, let alone improve it in the way we desperately need our Internet infrastructure improved over time, not just kept in its current state.

legohead 12y ago

Netflix pays for its bandwidth, like any internet service. If Netflix were to offer some ridiculous streaming option like 50k video, customers simply wouldn't be able to stream it because the customer is only paying its ISP for 10mbit or whatever. If the customer really wants this 50k video, it will have to pay the ISP to upgrade. In this way, the ISP is making its money off of Netflix already.