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

nytimes.com

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

#401

Post by dragonwriter »

pc86 wrote: post #180
chc wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's usually because Congress doesn't object. You may as well say Congress is unaccountable because of public apathy.

They largely are. Congress has what, a 93% re-election rate?

That's because of (1) limited real choices (yay FPTP elections) and (2) most people are negative about Congress, but that's mostly about the members of Congress that don't represent them; people tend to have a lot higher support for their members of Congress (in both Houses) than for Congress as a whole.

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

#402

Post by IanDrake »

wvenable wrote: post #37
IanDrake wrote: post #23

That will be a sad day. Internet technology still has a lot of room to improve before the government steps in and kills all market forces that encourage those improvements. If you don't like your current service levels now, just wait until the government gets involved.

It's not like the government created the Internet in the first place...

The Internet as you know it? No it wasn't. Darpa created TCP/IP with the help of private contractors. Private companies like AOL made the Internet what it is today in the US.

Sorry, I know the Al Gore created the Internet for some people, but the it's just not how it went down.

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

#403

Post by gadders »

bsder wrote: post #86
lutorm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You used to be able to choose. Then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis happened.

You need to point out that it was Enron causing the problem, not everybody has the context anymore of how badly they screwed California. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron

Not wholly. Poor government intervention caused the problem as well.

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

#404

Post by wmeredith »

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…

Contrarianism to a fault runs rampant on this board.

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

#405

Post by billiam »

MCRed wrote: post #355
shmerl wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

People who recognize that the internet has been a free market for most of its existence, and has consequently resulted in a massive economic boom. Without which, by the way, there would not be the startup culture we have now. (prior to the internet it was all semiconductors.) YC people here are advocating literally killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Do I sound like a shill for comcast? If so, you're not real…

Former network engineer here who built these big networks in the 1990s. At MCI and UUNET we used to talk about all the services we would build to compete with GeoCities and AOL. If only we didn't have to face our peers every Wednesday at informal meetings in the DC area and tell them that we would favor our own traffic over theirs at our interconnects. The traffic and interconnects were growing so fast we couldn't stop open peering and risk "killing the goose that laid the golden egg."

Now things are different. Comcast is a content company propped up by a cable monopoly. Title II? Hell yeah. But no price controls. Whatever it takes to get us to have the residential bandwidth of, say, Estonia.

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

#406

Post by ancap »

cbd1984 wrote: post #376
ancap wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do you think there is any such thing as a natural monopoly? I am not aware of any. >Do you think the cost inherent in laying cables makes the entity that owns the cables a natural monopoly? No, otherwise the "natural monopoly" existed before the first company ever laid cables.

>> Do you think there is any such thing as a natural monopoly? > I am not aware of any. I think, judging by your username (ancap), you are philosophically opposed to the concept, because the existence of natural monopolies would represent a failure of the pure free market capitalism you promote. I doubt I will convince you, and I doubt anyone else here needs to be convinced that natural monopolies exist. >> Do you th…

>I doubt I will convince you, and I doubt anyone else here needs to be convinced that natural monopolies exist.

You won't even try to provide an example? Perhaps it is not I who is "philosophically opposed to the concept".

>This simply does not make sense, which is further evidence that you're opposed to the concept. The high fixed costs of the laying of the cables relative to the small marginal cost of adding a new subscriber once cables have been laid is what creates a natural monopoly in this context. The massive economies of scale which are only available to the company which already has the cables laid make it infeasible for a new company to lay its own cables; that's how a natural monopoly is enforced.

You asked whether the cost of laying cables makes a company a monopoly. The question itself demonstrates "nonsense". If the cost of laying cables is an inhibiting factor for the first company, then it is also the inhibiting factor for any companies which follow. The cost of adding new subscribers is irrelevant. If the first company is not meeting the demands of the customer then the conditions are ripe for a competitor.

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

#407

Post by cwiley »

MCRed wrote: post #289
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…

Bottom line is that net neutrality comes out of the desire for people to be able to access any site they want without penalties due to traffic shaping or other shenanigans. The reason they are concerned is that the cable companies and to a lesser extent wireless and DSL companies are doing this. And why do they have the power to do this? Why don't people just vote with their feet and switch to a competitor? Because t…

>Every provider of POTS service to your houses and apartments is a regulated monopoly. And while they have to let DSL companies access the lines and long distance competition, the barriers to entry are still there, and the level of regulation is stifling making it hard to compete.

Not true and this isn't how this works. I work for a small, competitive provider of communications services, including POTS service. While we're regulated, we're hardly a monopoly. Yes, there are barriers to entry, but they are usually driven by cost and scale. In many cases it's regulation that permits competition!

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

#408

Post by dmfdmf »

I am concerned about the implications for free speech. And I don't mean the freedom to say whatever I want as long as the FCC approves or that I don't piss off a large enough political constituency. If I start a blog to post pictures of Alah am I going to be shut down? What about forums that discuss illegal drug use? How long till the FBI, DEA, etc. petition the FCC to shut these sites down? What about sites like reddit that carry porn, post pictures of Alah AND discuss illegal drug use? I don't care about these sites but I do care about their right to run these forums and the participants right to discuss any issue openly, even socially unacceptable ideas.

Free speech is a political principle but people pay lip service to it because they don't understand it and how important it is to a free society. If FCC starts to regulate speech on the internet (i.e. actual censorship which only the government can practice) by defining acceptable content and shutting down websites for so-called "hate speech", requiring a government "blog" license, etc. then it is game over for our freedoms and the future of the country.

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

#409

Post by warfangle »

MCRed wrote: post #289
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…

Bottom line is that net neutrality comes out of the desire for people to be able to access any site they want without penalties due to traffic shaping or other shenanigans. The reason they are concerned is that the cable companies and to a lesser extent wireless and DSL companies are doing this. And why do they have the power to do this? Why don't people just vote with their feet and switch to a competitor? Because t…

> Every provider of POTS service to your houses and apartments is a regulated monopoly

While the owner of the infrastructure probably could be considered such, they are required - by those same regulations - to allow third parties to resell the service.

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

#410

Post by shmerl »

pekk wrote: post #386
shmerl wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

One of the two major political parties has a stronger interest in reducing government regulation across the board to give corporations greater scope, even if that means stronger monopolies. You don't have to assume paid shills to get this outcome.

I don't get it. Why would any party prefer monopoly to free market? Formally neither Republicans nor Democrats are against free market (and preferring monopoly is being against free market). Unless of course it's all about corruption and bribery. I.e. monopolists paying those parties to do their bidding which is a common problem these days. But that again brings us back to paid shills or bought bureaucrats in this case.
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