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F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

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Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#311

Post by cbd1984 »

ancap wrote: post #112
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #32

As a libertarian who knows tech, I'm on the government's side here, although I'm grimacing while I'm supporting them. It's simply the lesser of two evils. One thing to help clarify the debate if you're talking to somebody who opposes this move: do not confuse the issue of how the government should be treating utilities in general with whether or not the internet is a utility. We can have a grand old time debating the…

>As a libertarian who knows tech, I'm on the government's side here That's an oxymoron. The core reason internet service sucks for the vast majority of Americans is because state and local governments grant monopoly status to the ISP cartels. This move by the FCC does nothing to remedy that and consequently will not solve the problem. If they require higher "standard" of internet without doing away with the monopolie…

Do you think there is any such thing as a natural monopoly?

Do you think the cost inherent in laying cables makes the entity that owns the cables a natural monopoly?

Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#312

Post by walterbell »

lomnakkus wrote: post #280
jkn wrote: post #221

Pretty impressed with the negativity here. Just a year ago, I remember all the stories on HN with people lamenting that the FCC doesn't have the guts to regulate broadband as a utility under title II [1,2,3] (admittedly with a minority speaking against title II, most prominently rayiner, whose comments I generally look forward to for an interesting contrarian view). Y Combinator even published an open letter[4]. Quot…

I'd also add that there's at least a couple of suddenly-prolific "green" commenters here today... which is interesting (but definitely not conclusive) as to what exactly is going on. Personally, I'd go from the assumption that suddenly-prolific "green" commenters have some special interest in the topic. These days -- since HN has become mainstream -- I'd lean towards astroturfing or some other monetary interest.

We need a statistical analysis of HN userids, thread topics and posting times.

Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#313

Post by greggyb »

comex wrote: post #302
greggyb wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did HBO compete with NBC? How do we have any channels besides PBS for that matter? How does any paid app compete with any free app? Why do we have netbooks when a a Raspberry Pi costs $35 and (the 2 at least) can do everything most consumers do on a computer? Your question carries with it the assumption that an ISP should be responsible for ensuring the success of application and website developers. Would you mak…

A closer analogy in the road-crew case would be a crew introducing obstructions to or closing lanes in roads that exit toward particular destinations, based on how much money the owners of businesses located at those destinations paid them. If the crew wanted to do their job and maintain the roads as the road conditions required, keeping their sights on the piece of infrastructure under their purview rather than butt…

Thanks for at least engaging with this instead of downvoting with no response.

I would argue that you are putting a negative spin on the analogy, so I'll put the corresponding positive spin on it to balance out.

For the road crew, we expect them to give us ready access to the places we most want to go. Imagine a highway - we would judge it a poor highway indeed if there were no exits within 10 miles of a large city. Similarly we do not expect the highway crew to give us equal access to some rural area, even though someone might one day build a fine resort out there. We don't judge a road by how well it gives access to things not yet built, but how well it gets us to the places we want to go.

Using that spin, we should actively encourage ISPs to make paid fast lanes, akin to a tolled expressway, with preferential access to the most common web destinations.

I do not agree with that conclusion. What I do think is that focusing on whether or not a company is allowed to perform any sort of rate-limiting ignores the much bigger issue that competition has been historically stifled in the ISP sector. Many (most?) municipalities offered exclusive franchises to cable (television) providers which made competitive entry illegal. Those cable providers are now our locked-in ISPs. If we must have government action, it seems to me that the best course is to allow freer entry into the market - this looks like allowing competitors rights-of-way to lay wire, allowing access to utility poles (based on my recollection the majority are not owned by telecoms - I should be fact checked on that, though), and dissolving any exclusive franchise agreements. Rate-limiting, as I started this entire thread with, is just a red herring.

(Final pedantic point - road work is done by a multitude of private firms contracting for the government - it is monopsony not monopoly.)

Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#314

Post by mbrubeck »

jkn wrote: post #221

Pretty impressed with the negativity here. Just a year ago, I remember all the stories on HN with people lamenting that the FCC doesn't have the guts to regulate broadband as a utility under title II [1,2,3] (admittedly with a minority speaking against title II, most prominently rayiner, whose comments I generally look forward to for an interesting contrarian view). Y Combinator even published an open letter[4]. Quot…

The new FCC proposal is also similar to the Mozilla Foundation's proposal from a year ago: In the key to our argument, we then ask the FCC to designate remote delivery services as telecommunications services under Title II of the Communications Act.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/mozilla-offers-fc...

The EFF is in favor: If the FCC is going to craft and enforce clear and limited neutrality rules, it must first do one important thing. The FCC must reverse its 2002 decision to treat broadband as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications service.” This is what’s known as Title II reclassification. According to the highest court to review the question, the rules that actually do what many of us want — such as forbidding discrimination against certain applications — require the FCC to treat access providers like “common carriers,” treatment that can only be applied to telecommunications services.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/white-house-gets-it-ne...

Google’s Austin Schlick (Director, Communications Law) says that Title II reclassification will help Google Fiber compete on a level playing field with cable and phone companies:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/google-to-fcc-if-...

This is a huge step forward for net neutrality, and it's based directly on work by people in “our” communities (Y Combinator, web businesses, tech non-profits...) who care a lot about protecting and growing the internet.

Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#315

Post by greggyb »

lbenes wrote: post #306
greggyb wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, offering an alternative solution is not a necessary component of arguing that a given proposal is objectively bad. Here's an excerpt from another point in this thread: >If regulation must occur, then I would prefer to see it happen in a manner that increases rather than decreases my choices. Forbidding a certain pricing strategy does not increase my choices. If regulation must occur, then I'd like to see somet…

First of all, I don't buy your argument that the proposal is bad. Your hypothetical situation where net neutrality could harm startups is so contrived it almost sounds like you are trolling. The odds of a future ISP competing by brokering a deal with the big content providers to undercut the established ISPs is never going to happen. The government failed to protect most of us from living under a broadband monopoly.…

The government did indeed fail to protect most of us from living under a broadband monopoly. In most cases by municipal governments granting exclusive franchises to cable (television) providers who have become our ISPs. The solution to such an exclusive contract is not to prohibit rate-limiting, but to allow competitors to enter the market.

Access to utility poles, granting rights-of-way to lay wire, or if positive action must be taken, enforcing excess bandwidth leases all address the issue much better.

As I began the thread with, the rate-limiting argument that makes up the thrust of the argument of net neutrality is at best a red herring.

Edit: Also, I did not suggest in my hypothetical that a startup ISP would broker a deal with major web companies, only that they might offer free bandwidth to consumers for those services as a loss leader. I further did not intend to suggest that without rate-limiting we would see no ISP startups. I was suggesting that disallowing the practice removes one tool (out of multiple tools) that a new entrant could use to effectively compete with an incumbent. Removing effective tools of competition can hurt consumers.

Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#316

Post by shmerl »

jkn wrote: post #221

Pretty impressed with the negativity here. Just a year ago, I remember all the stories on HN with people lamenting that the FCC doesn't have the guts to regulate broadband as a utility under title II [1,2,3] (admittedly with a minority speaking against title II, most prominently rayiner, whose comments I generally look forward to for an interesting contrarian view). Y Combinator even published an open letter[4]. Quot…

Who would want to be negative about it except monopolists' shills who are paid to do it?

Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#318

Post by shmerl »

IanDrake wrote: post #66
freehunter wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>market forces that encourage those improvements. Like a Comcast monopoly? You mean those market forces?

Comcast is not a monopoly. This is the sort of misunderstanding that I'm talking about. AT&T was a monopoly and the USPO is still a first class mail monopoly. I suspect Comcast is just the best option in your location and you're dissatisfied with it. Bummer for you, and I sincerely mean that. When industries get regulated by the government they get "protected". Protected from upstarts with new and better technology,…

> Comcast is not a monopoly.

It's close to it. Ask those who have nothing else to choose from in their area, and they'll tell you whether it's a monopoly or not.

Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#319

Post by shmerl »

NoPiece wrote: post #296
alchemism wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's playing semantic games though. If someone wants broadband at their house and the only possible provider is Comcast, then to them it may as well be called a monopoly.

It is also playing with semantics to exclude DSL from the definition of broadband. 99% of people served by Comcast are also going to have a telco that can provide an admittedly slower, but still broadband, connection via DSL.

> It is also playing with semantics to exclude DSL from the definition of broadband.

No need to play here. DSL is not broadband. Luckily you didn't try proposing to call telegraph broadband as well. Pigeon mail anyone?

Re: F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility

#320

Post by eropple »

MCRed wrote: post #285
lomnakkus wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 h…

Your posts in this thread have had the woe-is-me scream of the right wing, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not being disingenuous when you're being wrong.

There aren't one or two ISPs because of regulation, there are one or two ISPs because the barries to entry are discouragingly high. It's fantastically, stupefyingly expensive to run that much cable. There's a reason we as a country have paid for so much of it.

Wireless broadband and satellite are inferior goods and don't replace hardline connections. Even so, you seem to have this curious idea that spectrum usage isn't rivalrous...which is not exactly borne out by reality.

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