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The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#111

Post by throwaway6556 »

grzm wrote: post #92
F2 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly is the comment you're replying to "incendiary"?

The comment includes highly partisan and uncivil language: > spewing bullshit > the clownshow in office > D's get to clean up the mess Regardless of how right (or wrong) the commenter may be, this type of language does not invite or encourage the civil and productive discourse that is strongly valued on HN. There are ways to express such opinions in a civil way, though it requires more effort. Given the current polar…

Why do you like playing moderator? If you want to be a moderator, email dang, dude.

Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#112

Post by s73ver »

splintercell wrote: post #59
leereeves wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incentives to encourage competition do little good when regulations prevent competition. Even if there's a lot of money to be made providing better service than Comcast, who will receive approval to dig up the ground and place new cables?

> Incentives to encourage competition do little good when regulations prevent competition. Well then why introduce more regulation like 'Net Neutrality'?

Because the market itself cannot provide decent competition. Even if you got rid of most regulations, you'd still have barriers in the forms of having to tear up roads, and the massive investment in equipment you have to buy up front. That would still keep other players to a minimum. Net Neutrality is there to ensure that we still have the internet as we know it even if most people don't have competition between providers.

Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#113

Post by 1_2__3 »

splintercell wrote: post #56
__jal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's just spewing bullshit to get past the decision becoming final. Engaging on a level of logic with someone who is seeking an outcome and just says whatever they think will support their view. This is about the exercise of power. And as has happened since Reagan, when the clownshow in office is finally shown the door, the D's get to clean up the mess, work towards fixing economy yet again, and the cycle of life is…

In past I've seen comments and incendiary language like this be given warning from the mods. I come to this site because despite of being more liberal leaning, I can have calm conversations with people.

Apparently observing objective reality is incendiary?

Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#114

Post by outsidetheparty »

splintercell wrote: post #53
outsidetheparty wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, but that only works if we keep net neutrality as is! With Pai's changes, why would they spend money improving their pipes to handle more traffic, when instead they can just throttle their competitors' traffic down to the point where their existing pipes are sufficient?

Because that can't make you more money. The only reason why doing that would make sense if you want to purposely do harm at the cost of making profits. If UPS slows the packages of Amazon down because they're accepting money from Jet.com then they would be violating their consumer agreement with Amazon. If UPS provides faster delivery for Jet.com for higher fee, then Amazon's products would be delivered slower but ch…

> Because that can't make you more money. The only reason why doing that would make sense if you want to purposely do harm at the cost of making profits.

Of course it can make you more money! You can charge your competitors rent to stay out of the slow lane, and you can make your own subsidiary services artificially preferable to consumers (and therefore more profitable) by throttling the competition's bandwidth.

Your UPS analogy doesn't fit at all. UPS would have to own Jet, and Amazon would have to have no choice but to use UPS delivery for a large subset of its customers (remember that broadband service is an effective monopoly in large portions of the US). UPS would absolutely be able to slow down Amazon's packages, because that's what eliminating net neutrality literally means: ISPs are no longer required to treat all packets equally, they can pick and choose which traffic gets priority, and naturally they're going to prioritize their own, or those that have paid an extra tariff to get in the fast lane. Amazon's products would either be more expensive, because they're paying that tariff; or they'd have inferior delivery time. Either way, UPS profits, not because of the quality or speed of their service, but because they have the ability to degrade the quality of their competitors.

In a non-net neutrality world, faster != expensive (at least not any more than is already the case). Consumer choice == expensive. "Faster" would remain under the control of the ISPs, exactly as it is right now.

Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#116

Post by username223 »

twoodfin wrote: post #24
outsidetheparty wrote: post #8

> Pai argued that rolling back the rules will encourage ISPs to spend more on their broadband networks How? How on earth does letting ISPs milk more money out of their existing network incentivize those ISPs to expand that network? It's just so frustrating that these guys no longer even bother to pretend that their arguments make any logical sense at all. "We'll protect user privacy by eliminating these rules that pr…

Why is that confusing? During the Title II debate many on HN thought broadband should be regulated as a utility, or at least forced to be sold only as a "dumb pipe". Utilities and dumb pipes have terrible profit margins. Businesses want to invest capital in things that have larger profit margins (today, for example, wireless). Verizon's vision for Fios was to sell a bunch of value-add services like video calling and…

> Utilities and dumb pipes have terrible profit margins.

Utilities and dumb pipes also have incredible societal value. In the first world, potable water is so cheap that you can use a gallon of it to make your pee disappear, and water-borne disease is almost nonexistent. Businesses try to avoid this miracle of efficiency by putting that water in plastic bottles, trucking it around the country, marketing the hell out of it, and charging a dollar or more per liter, but I don't see any reason to encourage that behavior.

Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#117

Post by pseudalopex »

TearsInTheRain wrote: post #67
glitcher wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bullet points under the section "A New Approach" of that fact sheet seem like pure political rhetoric. Where is the evidence to support the legitimacy of any of those claims???

I think the evidence is implicit in the fact that the opposite of those things happened when net neutrality was put in place

That's anything but a fact.

Investment increased overall.[1]

The FCC classified ISPs as "telecommunications services", same as now, until the mid-2000s. That's the framework that worked well for decades. The one Pai wants is the one that killed competition.

The FCC issued network neutrality regulations in 2010 because ISPs had started to violate the guidelines the FCC unanimously approved in 2005. They only invoked Title II after ISPs sued to block the 2010 regulations.

Privacy regulation wasn't a problem until Congress removed the FCC's authority, and they could easily give the FTC the necessary authority without re-re-re-classifying ISPs.

[1] https://consumerist.com/2017/02/28/fcc-chair-claims-broadban...

Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#118

Post by cmdrfred »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #81
splintercell wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business Model 1: Build your own services and throttle everyone else's services unless they pay a premium (in which case your own services would be cheaper, but the profit they get from their own services must be higher than the profit they get from NOT selling the bandwidth their premium service uses, to third parties). Let's put it this way, if a hotel builds a Jacuzzi, you're argument is that the hotel owner will…

> You're claiming "There is no way they will go for business model 2, they will go for business model 1". But you have no presented any reason why they would do that? There are two reasons they would do that. The first is price discrimination. Suppose Spotify makes $2/month worth of profit but uses $0.05/month in bandwidth. Now Verizon can charge them $2/month for that amount of bandwidth and take their entire margin…

What happens when Spotify emails its customers saying "sorry we can't provide service to Verizon customers anymore, they charge us too much"

Some may stay and downgrade their service as they don't require as much bandwidth and some may leave Verizon entirely. It's not all roses for them.

Then Comcast, AT&T, Google or anyone else frankly begins offering "True unlimited full access internet" and eats Verizon's breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Meanwhile someone creates a VPN service to get around the blockade.

Re: The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules

#119

Post by [deleted] »

tzs wrote: post #25

> Pai's proposal is set for a vote at the FCC's May 18 open meeting. If it is approved, Pai will begin seeking public feedback on the plan, which calls for regulating ISPs more lightly and asks Americans for ways to preserve the core principles of net neutrality, such as the idea that blocking or slowing traffic should be off-limits. Well, the obvious way to "preserve the core principles of net neutrality, such as th…

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