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Ajit Pai is right

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Re: Ajit Pai is right

#261

Post by hammock »

steveax wrote: post #240
hammock wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>only if walmart and ISPs are a monopoly This is false. Under US antitrust law, /monopolistic behavior/ (that is, behavior that tends to create monopolies), e.g. predatory pricing and very large mergers, is what's generally regulated. It's not actually illegal to be a monopoly per se, and you don't have to be a monopoly to fall afoul of antitrust law.

WRT antitrust, what’s generally regulated these days is nothing, nada, zilch.

I wonder if immigration hardliners feel the same way about lack of enforcement at the border.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#262

Post by joeblow9999 »

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…

Ajit Pai isn't right, but here's why it doesn't even matter: he's ignoring the will of the people.

This is not ipso facto a bad thing.

The will of the people is sometimes evil and wrong. I can list hundreds of examples where going with the majority sentiment was wrong.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#263

Post by lovehashbrowns »

treis wrote: post #258
lovehashbrowns wrote: post #58

I don't want an ISP to push ANY apps that won't count against your data cap. How does that serve to promote competition? How is any company going to win over Facebook/Spotify/Youtube/etc. when every single ISP offers an internet plan that doesn't count data when used with those apps? That's outrageous, on top of the obvious fact that ISPs will tend to push their own services over others, or price-gouge apps to be pro…

How is any company going to win over Amazon with Prime free shipping and 2 hour delivery? Being a big incumbent comes with advantages in every market. Even with Net Neutrality and no zero rating, how are you going to come in and beat Netflix, Google, or Amazon with their thousands of edge servers and exclusive content?

Those issues are inherent to competition, not to the infrastructure. The ISPs shouldn't be deciding who gets to stay or go. Their infrastructure should be neutral, just as water pipes don't care if they're going to my house or to a giant industrial corporation that has a stronghold over the steel industry.

I think my example is bad. I'll try a slightly better one: My water pipes don't care if they go to my ABC brand dishwasher or another.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#264

Post by masklinn »

and0 wrote: post #181
eksu wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there isn’t much ‘clash’ (debate term) between what you’re saying and Ben Thompson’s article. Ben isn’t attacking the concept of Net Neutrality, he’s instead attacking Title II classification. Ben puts forward a few arguments. First, he starts off with an offensive piece of matter, that regulatory burden from the 2015 Title II classification has a cost, and that cost is felt innovators who want to enter t…

You can't compare the OP's point, that a tiered internet service would hurt small businesses doing business OVER the internet, to potential "new innovators" in the ISP space being burdened by regulations. That's an absurd false equivalence. (I'm also lost as to how a company that had the ability or tenacity to compete with Comcast / Verizon would look at basic regulation requirements / legal costs and give up? That's…

> Also, why in "pre-2015 internet days" did we have zero competition / innovation in the ISP space?

Because the Bush FCC repealed line-sharing requirements when they moved dial-up and from Title II to Title I back in 2005.

This means entrance into the ISP space is prohibitively expensive as you must build your network to get any client (huge initial/capital costs), which combined with the power of the incumbents mean no investor will be foolish enough to front the tens or hundreds of millions required to even step into the field.

Which is why most of the attempted competition is from public spaces (municipal broadband) which incumbent telcos and conservative organisations[0] heavily lobby against.

> If you apply the same argument there, that pre-2015 wasn't any different so Title II isn't a big deal, then why can't we just keep it?

Because the reclassification was the result of courts deciding the FCC could not actually enforce its net neutrality regulations under Title I in 2015. "pre-2015" was literally struck down by court order after Verizon sued the FCC.

[0] ALEC is one of the leading opponents to municipal broadband though by no means the only one, and "red" states lead the way in restricting or banning it

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#265

Post by parineum »

ABCLAW wrote: post #245
ShabbosGoy wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 un…

No, it isn't. Removing Title II classification does not get us back to the rules that governed the internet in 2015. The FCC issued the Open Internet Order in 2010. Verizon sued them within a month. In 2014, Verizon won the case, in part, but the court explicitly recognized that the ISPs represented a serious threat to the internet, as it was, and indicated the FCC had other options for regulating. Within a month fol…

You're saying yourself that it is a rollback. It's just not a rollback to pre-Verizon vs. FCC. It's a rollback to pre-Title II, post-Verizon vs. FCC.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#266

Post by treis »

lovehashbrowns wrote: post #263
treis wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is any company going to win over Amazon with Prime free shipping and 2 hour delivery? Being a big incumbent comes with advantages in every market. Even with Net Neutrality and no zero rating, how are you going to come in and beat Netflix, Google, or Amazon with their thousands of edge servers and exclusive content?

Those issues are inherent to competition, not to the infrastructure. The ISPs shouldn't be deciding who gets to stay or go. Their infrastructure should be neutral, just as water pipes don't care if they're going to my house or to a giant industrial corporation that has a stronghold over the steel industry. I think my example is bad. I'll try a slightly better one: My water pipes don't care if they go to my ABC brand…

Why not? Why shouldn't the best usage of a limited resource be determined by who is willing to pay the most money?

Does this extend to other industries? Should we force Fedex/UPS to ship at one speed only?

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#267

Post by cptskippy »

takeda wrote: post #247
nickpp wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of choice in ISP marked is due to heavy govt regulation. They then added more regulation to fix the problem they created. Which is my original point: keep increasing that power...

It's not. I don't know how old you are, but I remember it was very different ~20 years ago. Previously Internet was classified as a telecommunication service, and was following the same regulations. Any company could easily enter the market and provide a service. Until FCC deregulated it in 2002 and 2005. First was reclassification from telecommunication service to information service, the second was removing require…

You forgot the part where the government paid for the incumbent's infrastructure that they no longer have to share.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#268

Post by cptskippy »

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…

> they cannot be monopolies unless helped by governments.

So natural monopolies aren't a thing? How did Google, Microsoft, US Steel and Standard Oil benefit or receive government support?

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#269

Post by ryanwaggoner »

zzzeek wrote: post #160

> Then you read about how San Francisco requires 14 permits that take 9 months to issue (plus a separate alcohol permit) and you wonder why anyone opens a restaurant at all (compounded by the fact that already-permitted restaurants have a vested interest in making the process more onerous over time). Multiply that burden by all of the restaurants that never get created and the cost is very large indeed. so...either S…

so...either San Francisco has no restaurants at all, or this argument is complete garbage.

Or maybe you only get rich people and already successful chains opening new restaurants. Maybe you don't get a lot of first-time small business owners and innovative concepts because the barriers to entry are too high.

Re: Ajit Pai is right

#270

Post by ABCLAW »

parineum wrote: post #265
ABCLAW wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't. Removing Title II classification does not get us back to the rules that governed the internet in 2015. The FCC issued the Open Internet Order in 2010. Verizon sued them within a month. In 2014, Verizon won the case, in part, but the court explicitly recognized that the ISPs represented a serious threat to the internet, as it was, and indicated the FCC had other options for regulating. Within a month fol…

You're saying yourself that it is a rollback. It's just not a rollback to pre-Verizon vs. FCC. It's a rollback to pre-Title II, post-Verizon vs. FCC.

No, I'm not. And no it isn't - to say so is intentionally misleading.

The common use of the term rollback is to imply that a server or other system is reset to a previous stored state. We cannot get back to the previous state. Therefore this isn't a rollback.

It is a repeal, and not one that puts us back in 2015.

There is no going back home.

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