10 ms·

The major critique quoted here comes from David Farber of Carnegie-Mellon, who worries that classifying Internet access under Title II will allow it to be taxed

The major critique quoted here comes from David Farber of Carnegie-Mellon, who worries that classifying Internet access under Title II will allow it to be taxed. If that's the worst thing you can think of, we're in good shape.

dkhenry 12y ago
The power to tax is the power to destroy.
- skylan_q 12y ago
  I don't understand how people can disagree with this. He's perfectly correct. How often does one cite the price of cigarettes to quit smoking them?
  - glesica 12y ago
    That's nonsensical. It all depends on the utility of the smoker. Cigarette taxes are, in theory at least, Pigouvian taxes in the sense that the goal is to reduce the harm caused by smoking. They accomplish this in two ways, first, by providing funds to deal with the associated medical costs and two, by reducing the number of people who choose to smoke. Whether you agree with the assessed level of negative externalities or not (I don't, actually), the tax hasn't "destroyed" anything. Smoking still exists. Fewer people get sufficient utility from smoking to go on doing so, but that's the point of the tax in this case. Too many people were smoking previously due to market inefficiencies. Now the "correct" (again, I believe the externalities were lower than many people believe they were) number of people are smoking.
  - alexqgb 12y ago
    It's not that he's incorrect. It's that his observation is generalized to the point of being a useless distraction from this particular conversation. Had he indicated how the potentially destructive power of taxation is actually being used destructively and deliberately in this particular case, he'd have said something knowledgeable and interesting. But of course, that's not what happened.
- x11window 12y ago
  are you an anarchist or something?
  - akama 12y ago
    It's a rather famous quote from Chief Justice John Marshall for context.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- alexqgb 12y ago
  Yes, and the power to drive a car is the power to commit vehicular manslaughter. The question is not whether a driver can use this power to kill. It's whether they are actually using this power to kill. Needless to say, not evey tax is destructive, just as not every driver is a deadly menace who needs to be gotten of the road a.s.a.p.
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    not every driver is a deadly menace who needs to be gotten of the road a.s.a.p. Have you been on the interstate recently? ;)
0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
The worst part is involving the FCC at all.
- skylan_q 12y ago
  I'll have to agree to this. Electricity is electricity, water is water, natural gas is natural gas. But Internet traffic isn't a homogenous substance.
  - pavanky 12y ago
    Bytes are bytes.
    - skylan_q 12y ago
      It delivers more than just bytes. It's communication in different forms for different purposes. On the other hand, when water is delivered it's the same water here or there.
      - maccard 12y ago
        Telecoms are also classified as utilities.
      - angersock 12y ago
        And what form does that communication take? Bytes. As for the water, once delivered it is used for drinking, for washing, for cooling, for watering...but it travels, unmolested, as water being commonly carried.
      - ericd 12y ago
        The electricity certainly gets used for lots of different things. UDP and TCP is what I want my ISPs concerned with, not what I'm doing with those packets.
        Taniwha 12y ago
mbreese 12y ago
Internet access could always have been taxed... I'm not sure what in non-Title II classification would have stopped that. Congress can slap a tax on just about anything they'd like. In fact, if you were to believe Comcast, there are already regulatory fees and taxes associated with my internet access (non-TV).
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- alexqgb 12y ago
  Spectrum auctions (the costs of which are passed on to the winning telco's customers) are not only a tax, they're a tax that gets marked-up by a private company before being collected.
  - joelhaus 12y ago
    Very skillful framing of spectrum auctions as a tax. Would love to see this view pushed more widely, as society would reap some serious benefits... primarily large swathes of unlicensed spectrum. In a light-touch regulatory framework, this could lead to innovation leaps. If anyone is familiar with the economics of Coase (generally credited with devising the spectrum auction scheme), would love to read some good counter-points.
    - alexqgb 12y ago
      Thanks for the kind words. To be honest, this framing doesn't seem skillful at all. It seems screamingly obvious (at least to me). What I can't figure out is why this view should need so much pushing in the first place.
skuhn 12y ago
Internet access is already subject to tax, barring this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Tax_Freedom_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Tax_Freedom_Act
minikites 12y ago
Good, personal income and corporate taxes have never been lower and we're long overdue for a tax hike.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  You know you can voluntarily send more money, right? http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm I'm sure it's already on your to-do list, of course.
  - gglitch 12y ago
    I see this argument a lot but it seems specious to me - though anyone can voluntarily overpay their taxes, the lack of a guarantee that other taxpayers will similarly be contributing more means that my personal overcontribution will be meaningless to everyone but me.
    - MCRed 12y ago
      Right, the advocates for increased taxation don't want to pay more themselves-- they could do that now-- they want the other guy to pay more. How they think this won't make them poorer as well shows they aren't really thinking it thru.
      - aninhumer 12y ago
        There's a difference between throwing money at the government, and contributing my share as part of a larger tax system. Unwillingness to do the former does not equate to unwillingness to do the latter.
    - CamperBob2 12y ago
      Can we maybe try cutting back on optional trillion-dollar wars instead, and see how that goes? Just as a temporary experiment? If it doesn't work out, you can always raise my taxes later. When someone misuses their money, you shouldn't react by giving them even more. Really, is this such a radically-offensive position for me to take?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
nkw 12y ago
That isn't the worst by a long shot. I'm all for net neutrality, but Title II classification for ISPs really worries me. I was co-founder of a VOIP startup in 2003, and a significant percentage of our time and resources was spent dealing with how the service was going to be classified for purposes of the Telecom Act. A bunch of the states were wanting to regulate VOIP providers as telephone companies, the FCC was on the fence (the pulver / fwd decision wasn't out yet[1]). Almost everyone was advocating for VOIP to be classified as a interstate information service so that we could avoid the onerous outdated state-by-state telephone company regulations. We got what we wanted (VOIP classified as a information service), but then a few years later we ran into the problem of ISPs blocking/interfering/throttling VOIP connections. The FCC in its first net neutrality foray went after some of the companies (See e.g. Madison River[2]) for blocking VOIP. However, the interesting thing was they could only go after Madison River under their Title II authority because Madison River happened to be a DSL provider and subject to Title II authority. When they went after Comcast for Bitorrent blocking of course they lost[3]. If we had been subject to Title II and regulation as a telecommunications service almost all of the states had regulations they would have applied to us included such gems as: * tariff filing * price caps or approvals * required interconnection with legacy carriers * requirements to use legacy telecom protocols * surcharges for stuff like E911, relay service, universal service, etc. * obtain state approval before offering new services or products or discontinuing services or products * obtain state approval before opening a new facility * provide notice to the FCC and the state of network changes * intercarrier compensation * mandatory build outs (to offer service you have to offer service through all of area X) * required the use of specific accounting methods and cost assignment and reporting rules that make the tax code look simple and friendly * countless other stuff down to things like how much and what kind of UPS capacity we would have. Do we really want to open the door for every ISP to have to get approval from some government agency before it can interconnect to another network, put in a switch or open a new POP? They might not do it now, but once the regulatory framework is in place, it always seems agencies are willing to enact a new regulation a lot quicker than they are willing to get rid of one. As an aside one of the things the ISPs were publicly saying around that time was that they didn't have the technology to block or degrade VOIP even if they wanted to. Of course now this sounds absurd, but some policymakers were buying it. We actually traveled to DC and ended up demoing for several of the FCC commissioners how easy this would be to do (along with how hard it would be to detect) with a couple of lines of code. On one of these trips we ended up in an elevator with Kevin Martin [4] who was chairman at the time. He said his opinion was it was a mistake for the VOIP providers to race to get classified as an information provider to avoid the state regulation, taxes, etc., because it was going to end up permitting the ISPs to block/degrade the service. I don't know if I agree with him, but I see his point now. In the end VOIP providers ended up subject to a lot of the regulations anyway (as "interconnected VOIP providers"), but without the protections of Title II[5]. I think something does need to be done about net neutrality but I think the best solution is to encourage competition and more/smaller ISPs instead of giving the FCC carte blanche to regulate the Internet as a utility. Dane Jasper of sonic.net has laid it all out much better than I could[6]. It is essentially giving up and saying we are going to live with Internet access being run by monopolies like the power company. It puts us back to the Bell System in 1982, and that makes me sad. [1] https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-27A1.pdf https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-27A1.pd... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_States#FCC_promotes_freedom_without_regulation_.282004.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_St... and https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-05-543A2.pdf https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-05-543A2.pd... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_States#FCC_tries_and_fails_to_punish_Comcast_for_throttling_BitTorrent_.282007-2010.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_St... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Martin_(FCC) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Martin_(FCC) [5] http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/voice-over-internet-protocol-voip http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/voice-over-internet-protocol... [6] https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/2014/11/12/neutrality-is-just-a-symptom/ https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/2014/11/12/neutrality-is-just-a-s...
WillPostForFood 12y ago
In his own words (along with ), I think his bigger objection is that it will stifle innovation. The history of telecommunications regulation tells a sorry story of glacial decision-making focusing on yesterday’s problems, inhibition of innovation, and, worst of all, what economists call “rent-seeking”—businesses’ use of the regulatory process to put their competitors at a disadvantage. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/531671/are-we-really-saving-the-open-internet/ http://www.technologyreview.com/view/531671/are-we-really-sa...
- lomnakkus 12y ago
  Yes, because clearly one-or-two possibly-colluding ISPs in your particular area are driven existentially towards increasing the value for you, the customer. Get real. Besides, there's very little innovation in the actual IP layer anymore -- though, perhaps you could point to some? It's basically (by sheer domination) not displacable at this point. Hence QUIC and such things which could probably be done (even) better at a lower layer, but which for all practical purposes are dead in the water if they don't function above IP. (In the case of QUIC at the IP/UDP layer.)
  - MCRed 12y ago
    Why are there only one or two ISPs in your area? Because of regulation. Cable companies are government granted monopoly. The reason you don't have cable choice is that monopoly. Local phone service, similar thing, though regulations have opened up long distance access, only one company has the infrastructure. Wireless Broadband, similar thing, artificial scarcity created by regulation (spread spectrum would support hundreds of local services) and spectrum auctions literally selling regulated monopolies created out of thin air. And while they did offer multiple bands, they limited it to only 3 monopolies per a given area (and one company has the choice band while the other two have lesser bands.) The only reason these companies have power to shape traffic is the federal and local governments have given them monopolies.
    - lomnakkus 12y ago
      Stop spewing bullshit. I don't even live in the US. I have lots of choice. EDIT: Btw, love how two commenters pounced on my post immeditaely even though we're in a 280+ comment thread. How's that astroturfing going for you?

dkhenry 12y ago

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

skylan_q 12y ago
I don't understand how people can disagree with this. He's perfectly correct. How often does one cite the price of cigarettes to quit smoking them?
- glesica 12y ago
  That's nonsensical. It all depends on the utility of the smoker. Cigarette taxes are, in theory at least, Pigouvian taxes in the sense that the goal is to reduce the harm caused by smoking. They accomplish this in two ways, first, by providing funds to deal with the associated medical costs and two, by reducing the number of people who choose to smoke. Whether you agree with the assessed level of negative externalities or not (I don't, actually), the tax hasn't "destroyed" anything. Smoking still exists. Fewer people get sufficient utility from smoking to go on doing so, but that's the point of the tax in this case. Too many people were smoking previously due to market inefficiencies. Now the "correct" (again, I believe the externalities were lower than many people believe they were) number of people are smoking.
- alexqgb 12y ago
  It's not that he's incorrect. It's that his observation is generalized to the point of being a useless distraction from this particular conversation. Had he indicated how the potentially destructive power of taxation is actually being used destructively and deliberately in this particular case, he'd have said something knowledgeable and interesting. But of course, that's not what happened.
x11window 12y ago
are you an anarchist or something?
- akama 12y ago
  It's a rather famous quote from Chief Justice John Marshall for context.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
alexqgb 12y ago
Yes, and the power to drive a car is the power to commit vehicular manslaughter. The question is not whether a driver can use this power to kill. It's whether they are actually using this power to kill. Needless to say, not evey tax is destructive, just as not every driver is a deadly menace who needs to be gotten of the road a.s.a.p.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  not every driver is a deadly menace who needs to be gotten of the road a.s.a.p. Have you been on the interstate recently? ;)

0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago

The worst part is involving the FCC at all.

skylan_q 12y ago
I'll have to agree to this. Electricity is electricity, water is water, natural gas is natural gas. But Internet traffic isn't a homogenous substance.
- pavanky 12y ago
  Bytes are bytes.
  - skylan_q 12y ago
    It delivers more than just bytes. It's communication in different forms for different purposes. On the other hand, when water is delivered it's the same water here or there.
    - maccard 12y ago
      Telecoms are also classified as utilities.
    - angersock 12y ago
      And what form does that communication take? Bytes. As for the water, once delivered it is used for drinking, for washing, for cooling, for watering...but it travels, unmolested, as water being commonly carried.
    - ericd 12y ago
      The electricity certainly gets used for lots of different things. UDP and TCP is what I want my ISPs concerned with, not what I'm doing with those packets.
      - Taniwha 12y ago

mbreese 12y ago

Internet access could always have been taxed... I'm not sure what in non-Title II classification would have stopped that. Congress can slap a tax on just about anything they'd like. In fact, if you were to believe Comcast, there are already regulatory fees and taxes associated with my internet access (non-TV).

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
alexqgb 12y ago
Spectrum auctions (the costs of which are passed on to the winning telco's customers) are not only a tax, they're a tax that gets marked-up by a private company before being collected.
- joelhaus 12y ago
  Very skillful framing of spectrum auctions as a tax. Would love to see this view pushed more widely, as society would reap some serious benefits... primarily large swathes of unlicensed spectrum. In a light-touch regulatory framework, this could lead to innovation leaps. If anyone is familiar with the economics of Coase (generally credited with devising the spectrum auction scheme), would love to read some good counter-points.
  - alexqgb 12y ago
    Thanks for the kind words. To be honest, this framing doesn't seem skillful at all. It seems screamingly obvious (at least to me). What I can't figure out is why this view should need so much pushing in the first place.

skuhn 12y ago

Internet access is already subject to tax, barring this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Tax_Freedom_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Tax_Freedom_Act

minikites 12y ago

Good, personal income and corporate taxes have never been lower and we're long overdue for a tax hike.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
CamperBob2 12y ago
You know you can voluntarily send more money, right? http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm I'm sure it's already on your to-do list, of course.
- gglitch 12y ago
  I see this argument a lot but it seems specious to me - though anyone can voluntarily overpay their taxes, the lack of a guarantee that other taxpayers will similarly be contributing more means that my personal overcontribution will be meaningless to everyone but me.
  - MCRed 12y ago
    Right, the advocates for increased taxation don't want to pay more themselves-- they could do that now-- they want the other guy to pay more. How they think this won't make them poorer as well shows they aren't really thinking it thru.
    - aninhumer 12y ago
      There's a difference between throwing money at the government, and contributing my share as part of a larger tax system. Unwillingness to do the former does not equate to unwillingness to do the latter.
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    Can we maybe try cutting back on optional trillion-dollar wars instead, and see how that goes? Just as a temporary experiment? If it doesn't work out, you can always raise my taxes later. When someone misuses their money, you shouldn't react by giving them even more. Really, is this such a radically-offensive position for me to take?

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

nkw 12y ago

That isn't the worst by a long shot. I'm all for net neutrality, but Title II classification for ISPs really worries me. I was co-founder of a VOIP startup in 2003, and a significant percentage of our time and resources was spent dealing with how the service was going to be classified for purposes of the Telecom Act. A bunch of the states were wanting to regulate VOIP providers as telephone companies, the FCC was on the fence (the pulver / fwd decision wasn't out yet[1]). Almost everyone was advocating for VOIP to be classified as a interstate information service so that we could avoid the onerous outdated state-by-state telephone company regulations. We got what we wanted (VOIP classified as a information service), but then a few years later we ran into the problem of ISPs blocking/interfering/throttling VOIP connections. The FCC in its first net neutrality foray went after some of the companies (See e.g. Madison River[2]) for blocking VOIP. However, the interesting thing was they could only go after Madison River under their Title II authority because Madison River happened to be a DSL provider and subject to Title II authority. When they went after Comcast for Bitorrent blocking of course they lost[3]. If we had been subject to Title II and regulation as a telecommunications service almost all of the states had regulations they would have applied to us included such gems as: * tariff filing * price caps or approvals * required interconnection with legacy carriers * requirements to use legacy telecom protocols * surcharges for stuff like E911, relay service, universal service, etc. * obtain state approval before offering new services or products or discontinuing services or products * obtain state approval before opening a new facility * provide notice to the FCC and the state of network changes * intercarrier compensation * mandatory build outs (to offer service you have to offer service through all of area X) * required the use of specific accounting methods and cost assignment and reporting rules that make the tax code look simple and friendly * countless other stuff down to things like how much and what kind of UPS capacity we would have. Do we really want to open the door for every ISP to have to get approval from some government agency before it can interconnect to another network, put in a switch or open a new POP? They might not do it now, but once the regulatory framework is in place, it always seems agencies are willing to enact a new regulation a lot quicker than they are willing to get rid of one. As an aside one of the things the ISPs were publicly saying around that time was that they didn't have the technology to block or degrade VOIP even if they wanted to. Of course now this sounds absurd, but some policymakers were buying it. We actually traveled to DC and ended up demoing for several of the FCC commissioners how easy this would be to do (along with how hard it would be to detect) with a couple of lines of code. On one of these trips we ended up in an elevator with Kevin Martin [4] who was chairman at the time. He said his opinion was it was a mistake for the VOIP providers to race to get classified as an information provider to avoid the state regulation, taxes, etc., because it was going to end up permitting the ISPs to block/degrade the service. I don't know if I agree with him, but I see his point now. In the end VOIP providers ended up subject to a lot of the regulations anyway (as "interconnected VOIP providers"), but without the protections of Title II[5]. I think something does need to be done about net neutrality but I think the best solution is to encourage competition and more/smaller ISPs instead of giving the FCC carte blanche to regulate the Internet as a utility. Dane Jasper of sonic.net has laid it all out much better than I could[6]. It is essentially giving up and saying we are going to live with Internet access being run by monopolies like the power company. It puts us back to the Bell System in 1982, and that makes me sad. [1] https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-27A1.pdf https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-27A1.pd... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_States#FCC_promotes_freedom_without_regulation_.282004.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_St... and https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-05-543A2.pdf https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-05-543A2.pd... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_States#FCC_tries_and_fails_to_punish_Comcast_for_throttling_BitTorrent_.282007-2010.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_St... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Martin_(FCC) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Martin_(FCC) [5] http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/voice-over-internet-protocol-voip http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/voice-over-internet-protocol... [6] https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/2014/11/12/neutrality-is-just-a-symptom/ https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/2014/11/12/neutrality-is-just-a-s...

WillPostForFood 12y ago

In his own words (along with ), I think his bigger objection is that it will stifle innovation. The history of telecommunications regulation tells a sorry story of glacial decision-making focusing on yesterday’s problems, inhibition of innovation, and, worst of all, what economists call “rent-seeking”—businesses’ use of the regulatory process to put their competitors at a disadvantage. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/531671/are-we-really-saving-the-open-internet/ http://www.technologyreview.com/view/531671/are-we-really-sa...

lomnakkus 12y ago
Yes, because clearly one-or-two possibly-colluding ISPs in your particular area are driven existentially towards increasing the value for you, the customer. Get real. Besides, there's very little innovation in the actual IP layer anymore -- though, perhaps you could point to some? It's basically (by sheer domination) not displacable at this point. Hence QUIC and such things which could probably be done (even) better at a lower layer, but which for all practical purposes are dead in the water if they don't function above IP. (In the case of QUIC at the IP/UDP layer.)
- MCRed 12y ago
  Why are there only one or two ISPs in your area? Because of regulation. Cable companies are government granted monopoly. The reason you don't have cable choice is that monopoly. Local phone service, similar thing, though regulations have opened up long distance access, only one company has the infrastructure. Wireless Broadband, similar thing, artificial scarcity created by regulation (spread spectrum would support hundreds of local services) and spectrum auctions literally selling regulated monopolies created out of thin air. And while they did offer multiple bands, they limited it to only 3 monopolies per a given area (and one company has the choice band while the other two have lesser bands.) The only reason these companies have power to shape traffic is the federal and local governments have given them monopolies.
  - lomnakkus 12y ago
    Stop spewing bullshit. I don't even live in the US. I have lots of choice. EDIT: Btw, love how two commenters pounced on my post immeditaely even though we're in a 280+ comment thread. How's that astroturfing going for you?