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Proposed “Internet Freedom Act” permanently guts net neutrality authority

arstechnica.com

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Re: Proposed “Internet Freedom Act” permanently guts net neutrality authority

#61

Post by rayiner »

epistasis wrote: post #53
rayiner wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much money does Google make off of your info? Alphabet's net income in 2016 was $19.5 billion, as much as Comcast and Verizon put together. Alphabet's return on invested capital and operating margins were significantly higher than either. There are various reasons to regulate ISPs, but "they make too much money" isn't a particularly good one: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corp... (tele…

Google isn't one of the major internet providers here, whether Google's business has proper competition or not is not my point. My point is that we pay ISPs as much as we pay for the rest of the computing infrastructure, that they are a major player, with tons of money and high profits, and terrible service. That they aren't acting like the big boys, even though they have the cash to. ISPs are currently entrenched wi…

The point is that they're not particularly profitable in comparison to Google, even though in theory Google plays in competitive markets while ISPs are "entrenched without competition."

Re: Proposed “Internet Freedom Act” permanently guts net neutrality authority

#62

Post by Karunamon »

snickerbockers wrote: post #58
Karunamon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. I'll become less effective at my job, because the only search engine worth a darn is the second largest dataminer in the world. In fact, scratch that, I won't even have internet access, because the ISP datamines me. Now I'm out of work and homeless. No bank accounts either. The only stuff near me are instances of corporate banks that datamine my spending habits all to hell. Same for credit cards. When you figur…

>Okay. I'll become less effective at my job, because the only search engine worth a darn is the second largest dataminer in the world. Clearly the cost of losing your privacy is worth it to you because choose not to use competing services like duckduckgo that will respect your privacy. With respects to banks and ISPs, the major players in those industries support overregulation because they know it prevents smaller c…

Probably because I have a concrete notion of what "my privacy" entails, and I consciously don't place "things i'm typing in a search box to $company" in the "things $company shouldn't know about" box.

On top of all that, there's the functional aspect as well. DDG's results plain and simply suck, and using a search engine out of principle is purely an exercise in self flagellation if I can't accomplish the goal I set out to do.

Re: Proposed “Internet Freedom Act” permanently guts net neutrality authority

#63

Post by mikeash »

matt4077 wrote: post #5

It is bewildering how different these Senators' concepts of reality must be from mine to consider this a good idea. I wouldn't even consider it debatable... There's a reason, after all, that ISPs around the world have largely shied back from such practices in the past. Part of the problem may be that those most hurt don't even exist, yet. Depending on how blatantly ISPs would exploit their position as gatekeeper of t…

These are mostly the same people who think that climate change is a hoax and that creationism is a valid alternative to evolution. Reality is not their strong suit.

Their ideology says that government regulation is bad and free markets are good, with essentially no wiggle room for nuance. This implies that ISPs are being hobbled by government regulations, and that freeing them to do as they please will benefit us all.

It doesn't matter whether or not it's true, it's what they believe, and they're approaching it from a perspective that's impervious to facts.

Re: Proposed “Internet Freedom Act” permanently guts net neutrality authority

#66

Post by anigbrowl »

jonomw wrote: post #45
anigbrowl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can never know other people's motivations, but one can certainly guess, and pretty much everyone agrees that Pai is smart enough to know better.

He obviously is intelligent if he has made it this far, but taking everything he says, I can't regard him as more than an idiot. He says contradictory things. He says he supports an idea but doesn't support the act of enforcing it. His apparent ideology is in direct conflict with his actions. He either fundamentally misunderstands the situation, is majorly corrupt, or is simply malicious (which I doubt).

It's good to give people the benefit of the doubt - once. If they persistently behave in perverse fashion, then it's also OK to conclude that they're assholes.

Re: Proposed “Internet Freedom Act” permanently guts net neutrality authority

#67

Post by tehabe »

The word "freedom" is really overused, and nobody seems to have an idea what it actually means. This will get ISP more freedom to charge their customers higher rates for the same service they enjoy today.

I'm still a little bit jealous about what the city of Stockholm did. They started to built a dark fiber network, which ISPs can use to get to their customers. The result is, more competition and lower prices. Essentially net neutrality on layer 1.

Re: Proposed “Internet Freedom Act” permanently guts net neutrality authority

#68

Post by s73ver »

snickerbockers wrote: post #50
alphabettsy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enough with this crap, many places have one provider to choose from. This is especially true in cities where many live in apartments or condos, and also in rural areas where the cost of build-out is very high.

That's because government regulations create artificial entry barriers that preclude a free and open market. It's foolhardy to believe that adding more regulations will solve anything.

Starting an ISP is incredibly expensive, even if you didn't have regulations. If you got rid of all ISP regulations tomorrow, you would be lucky if in 3 years you'd start to see competition. And most places wouldn't be valuable enough to have more than one provider.

When you argue for getting rid of these regulations, you're basically saying that a bunch of people don't deserve quality, neutral internet.

Re: Proposed “Internet Freedom Act” permanently guts net neutrality authority

#69

Post by mikeash »

bkeroack wrote: post #3

As a counterpoint to some of the outrage/hysteria over the new net neutrality policy, check out this interview with the new FCC chairman Ajit Pai: https://thefederalist.com/2017/04/26/fcc-chairman-ajit-pai-s... He makes some really good points and generally comes across as well-informed and well-intentioned. In this climate of crazy media hype it's good to keep an open mind and listen to the actual people working on…

"At the end of the day it’s going to settle, I hope, where the consumer is the one who is paying a lower price for the content that he or she wants."

Oh goodie, I can't wait to pay extra for "professional-grade internet" because I want to access things like GitHub, and not just Facebook.

I'm not up for listening to a 50 minute interview with the guy, but if that quote is representative, he doesn't sound remotely well-intentioned.

Re: Proposed “Internet Freedom Act” permanently guts net neutrality authority

#70

Post by pvnick »

jressey wrote: post #64
pvnick wrote: post #56

Good. The less federal regulation over ISPs the better.

Barriers to entry in the ISP game are too high for competition. Google can't even hack it. What is your perspective as a free-market advocate in this scenario?

Wait patiently for the inevitable correction.

E.g. innovation like this and other things we can't even imagine yet: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/17/elon-musk...

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