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Ajit Pai is right

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Re: Ajit Pai is right

#211

Post by jyrkesh »

takeda wrote: post #195
thehardsphere wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I am asking that. Several other commentors have asserted that "the world changed" a few years before the rule passed, yet nobody has really explained in detail how. So far I've gotten a hypothetical about Wal-Mart paying ISPs to destroy Amazon, which didn't actually happen. (Though I haven't read other responses yet, so maybe there's something more here I just have missed.) But, let's take a closer look at…

The reason FCC made change in 2015, because in 2014 court ruled that with prior classification, FCC had no authority to enforce anything unless they reclassify the Internet. Before the ruling, the companies were still respecting what FCC said (here are some cases that happened between 2002 (when FCC reclassified Internet as a telecommunication service) and 2015[1]), now the cat is out of the bag. Also note that 2015…

So in all of the cases listed in your citation, was it the FCC that censured them in order to get the corrective behavior?

I'm cherrypicking here, but as an avid Bittorrent user, I remember there being significant debate with the community about the extent and methods that Comcast was using to "throttle" Bittorrent. (And I can honestly say that I was never impacted by them.) And I say this as someone who despises Comcast (regretfully, I'm stuck with them even today).

In any case, it doesn't pop out at me that many of those violations were actually mitigated by the FCC. E.g. Google Wallet got blocked, but Isis(sic)/Softcard was just terrible. By the time it was dying, carriers were letting Google Wallet through and then Apple Pay paved the way for Android Pay.

And actually a few of them (like zero-rating in the case of MetroPCS), aren't negative in my mind. I get the "startups can't compete" thing, but particularly mobile data cabs are still necessary today, and I'm okay with innovative, pro-consumer pricing models that get mobile internet into the hands of more people (which is intuitively going to happen when non-incumbents are the ones doing the innovating).

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#212

Post by cannonedhamster »

majos wrote: post #159
cannonedhamster wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the reality that there's miles and miles of taxpayer funded black fiber that they choose not to light up so that they can claim a bandwidth shortage.

Can you expand on this?

It's part of this whole thing which is a rabbit hole unto itself:

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/e...

tldr version: There were very large subsidies paid to expand broadband as well as the Universal Service Fund. The companies actually built out broadband lines to a lot of areas with minimal coverage and then didn't build the last mile because it was expensive and provided "separate but equal" services such as WiMax, UVerse, or other less equitable services.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#213

Post by takeda »

nickpp wrote: post #180
cptskippy wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't something similar be said of companies? Companies what regulations repealed: to increase the company's power while pretending to protect you, but in fact increasing your dependence of said company. Why do you have more faith in companies than a government? Do you honestly believe that market forces can sway mega corporations?

Because I always have a choice with companies: they cannot be monopolies unless helped by governments. Startups and competitors will swiftly punish any bad player in a free market, thus compelling players to behave. The proof is all around me: everything good comes from companies: cars, computers, my house, my heating furnace, restaurant food, hotels, etc. Everything crappy and bad is related one way or another with…

First Title II doesn't make the government start offering Internet service, it is similar to FDA preventing companies to include poison in our food to cut cost (and you can be sure that especially the public companies would do that if they could. This happens when individual people are not liable and #1 goal of a public company is to improve earnings every quarter).

I have an exercise for you right now.

Let say you are pissed at your current ISP and don't want to use them anymore, who would you switch to? If you have 1 extra choice of high speed internet, congratulations you're one of very small percentage of people. If you don't have other choices (like me) perhaps now you see the problem.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#214

Post by pseudalopex »

thehardsphere wrote: post #87
zbruhnke wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you missed is that internet providers started to realize they may be able to squeeze more money out of both consumers and large corporates a few years back and that began to change their thoughts about how to make more money with a largely unregulated industry and Net Neutrality was put in place to preserve the internet's ability to innovate. Let's not forget Ajit Pai was just a few years ago a corporate at…

How did they "realize" that, suddenly a couple years ago? I am not doubting you, I am genuinely confused. I mean, human greed is a constant, and the rules didn’t change from 1996-2015, yet during the same period you said that Wal-Mart would have paid to destroyed Amazon, Amazon became one of the most wealthy and powerful companies in the world. So... it must be something more than the rules, right? Greedy companies w…

The rules did change between 1996 and 2015. The FCC reclassified DSL and cable ISPs as information services in the mid-2000s, ending line-sharing rules that enabled competition and common carrier rules that were more stringent than the net neutrality rules that replaced them. In 2014, the courts ruled that the FCC couldn't continue enforcing net neutrality under the post-2005 classification.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#215

Post by vdnkh »

thehardsphere wrote: post #165
cptskippy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental flaw in your argument is that you're failing to ask one very important question. Why was the rule put in place in 2015? Most regulations, like laws, are reactive in nature. If our existing laws and regulations were good enough then why would we need to elect new law makers? Why would we even need them at all? The fact is that people are constantly finding new and creative ways to exploit others and or…

Actually, I am asking that. Several other commentors have asserted that "the world changed" a few years before the rule passed, yet nobody has really explained in detail how. So far I've gotten a hypothetical about Wal-Mart paying ISPs to destroy Amazon, which didn't actually happen. (Though I haven't read other responses yet, so maybe there's something more here I just have missed.) But, let's take a closer look at…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Communications_Inc._...

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#217

Post by nobleach »

metalliqaz wrote: post #75

Ajit Pai isn't right, but here's why it doesn't even matter: he's ignoring the will of the people. Under his chairmanship the FCC has (1)intentionally made it more difficult to comment on proceedings, (2) ignored the blatant and illegal automated responses that flooded the comment system without the knowledge of the people whose names were used, (3) tried to suppress participation by faking a DDOS, (4) obstructed inv…

The major issue with this "robust competition" (which I would tend to agree with) What do you do when one entity (perhaps unfairly, or with taxpayer's dollars) already been given one heck of an upper-hand? What if they've lobbied to make it impossible for you to dig in the ground and run your "tubes" along side theirs?

Has Comcast proven that they're open to "robust competition"? If I could somehow find another way to pipe data into someone's home, do you think Comcast would _not_ try to find some way to litigate against it? For an industry that started as a community shared antenna, what do you think they'd do to another group that tried to do basically the same thing? (read the result of Aereo court case for the answer)

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#218

Post by dragonwriter »

apple4ever wrote: post #176
dd36 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-2015 rules were overturned by the courts in 2014. That’s why reclassification happened... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Communications_Inc._... Apologies to those that have seen my comments 10x in this thread. It’s amazing how uninformed some people are about how this all came about. The FCC didn’t want to use Title II. It had a much lighter touch NN schema but Verizon destroyed it. The courts said the…

No, the solution isn't Title II, but a new law. Title II is terrible, and should be opposed both by NN supporters AND opponents.

Title II isn't terrible and all the arguments that it is (including this one) rest not on the actual regulations adopted under Title II in 2015, but on either vague handwaves, regulations that could in principle be adopted under Title II but have not, or naive assumption that regulations nearly identical to other Title II markets would be adopted for broadband with the FCC ignoring market differences.

This article also ignores the problem with regulation under Title I in that it fails to recognize that the courts have both subsequently struck down both the case-by-case enforcement of neutrality principles under Title I and the ability of the FCC to adopt meaningful general regulation aimed at neutrality without Title II reclassification. Yes, one can argue that either the 2010 Title I regs or the pre-2010 case-by-case approach were sufficient, and that if they were continued, Title II would be unnecessary (it's not clear to me that that is accurate, but it's a defensible position in either case.) But the courts ruled against the case-by-case Title I actions in 2010, and the 2010 Title I regs in 2014. So, whether what the FCC was doing previously under it's understanding of Title I was sufficient is irrelevant to present policy options. Title II is, literally, all that's left for the FCC without abandoning net neutrality entirely.

Yes, it might be argued that a properly crafted new, internet-specific neutrality statute would be better than Title II. Great. Get one passed through Congress, and then we can discuss the FCC acting based on it. But in the world we live in, there is only Title II or surrender.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#219

Post by throwaway23497 »

stinky613 wrote: post #95
Shivetya wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

prior to the rule change in 2014 did we have such a problem? I recall the days of my choices in a highly regulated environment of being ISDN or T1. Provided I could even get either at my home. The issue I have is one of perception. People are magically convinced that NN will grant them all sorts of benefits but no one seems to agree with what they are. I can almost guarantee one thing, continue as is and the rate bro…

I recall the days of dial-up & DSL internet, where I had multiple national ISPs to choose from, as well as several local ISPs... all of which operated over phone lines... which meant they were covered by Title II. This notion that everything was unregulated until two years ago is counterfactual.

>which operated over phone lines... which meant they were covered by Title II.

Do you have a source on this??

I've seen this claim made a few times in this thread and have been unable to find anything to back it up. I was under the impression that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 dictated that all ISP's were information services and exempted them from common-carrier and the like.

The phone services themselves were of course under title II but I've not found anything that indicates the ISP's that created a network on top of the phone network were.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#220

Post by ShabbosGoy »

ABCLAW wrote: post #167
pbreit wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Pai just advocating going back to the pre-2015 regulatory structure? Was the internet really so bad prior to 2015?

No he isn't. Internet was fine in 2015 because the FCC was working fairly hard to prevent ISPs from shitting it up. Please read the following: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Communications_Inc._v.... As a side note. I can't help but feel like this comment is insincere - if it isn't, I apologize. Understanding enough about the issue to believe Pai's attempt is a rollback indicates that a poster would have read…

Because it is a rollback

"The FCC will vote on Dec. 12 whether to roll back 2015 rules that prohibit internet service providers from blocking or throttling content, or from selling “fast lanes” so major companies can get speedier access to consumers. Net neutrality activists say such rules are necessary to prevent the internet from being walled off, where access is restricted by ISPs or where certain sites have an unfair advantage over others."[1]

Today, certain sites already have an unfair advantage over others due to peering and PNIs. Can my startup afford to put a CDN box and colo @ Verizon? Of course not. So my startup is already at a disadvantage to Google, Amazon, Facebook etc.

The end result is that Netflix will have to renegotiate their peering rates. How does this affect the consumer? The short answer is it doesn't.

[1] http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/fcc-ajit-pai-net-neutrality...

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