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Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

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Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#81

Post by revelation »

rayiner wrote: post #63
revelation wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an odd analogy, and I don't think infrastructure providers making all the money is "the natural state of things". The people actually building the infrastructure (Android) arent't making much any money with it, while those using it (Samsung) are. That is how its supposed to work; if power companies and utilities had been able to extract all the profit from manufacturing companies and discriminate against spec…

Android is part of the platform, but it's clearly not the capital intensive part of the cell phone infrastructure. That's be the CPUs, the DRAMs, the flash memory, etc. And there is nothing cheap about providing internet access. AT&T and Verizon lead the country in annual capital expenditure: http://news.investors.com/technology/091913-671712-institute... . > Meanwhile, we are being reluctant to regulate internet pro…

CapEx obviously doesn't tell the story, certainly not for companies like AT&T and Verizon. Try fundamentals; Moores has done good work for bandwidth, as media is still being streamed at 6 MBit. I'm not sure lawmakers understand this; there is no capacity problem. Technology is vastly ahead of growth and certainly consumer access to bandwidth. Meanwhile, internet providers are trying to tell lawmakers they need to make YouTube (and customers) pay for traffic because theres somehow congestion.

Of course it's not a technical fact. The basic idea is that regulating them to be the dumb pipe can yield the biggest gain for the general economy, while they get the benefit of a low margin, but extremely stable business (as with any other infrastructure).

The obvious problem right now is that instead of competing with each other, internet providers are trying to compete with their customers. That is not the sign of a working market, and it is not acceptable for critical infrastructure. Regulation is needed, and certainly not towards giving providers more flexibility.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#82

Post by tinalumfoil »

sologoub wrote: post #75

Definitions from US Code Title 47: "(1) Advanced communications services The term “advanced communications services” means— (A) interconnected VoIP service; (B) non-interconnected VoIP service; (C) electronic messaging service; and (D) interoperable video conferencing service." "(11) Common carrier The term “common carrier” or “carrier” means any person engaged as a common carrier for hire, in interstate or foreign c…

common carrier n. - an individual, a company or a public utility (like municipal buses) which is in the regular business of transporting people and/or freight.

freight n. - Goods carried by a vessel or vehicle, especially by a commercial carrier; cargo.

Packets are neither classified as people nor freight.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#83

Post by Daniel_Newby »

danielweber wrote: post #55
zem wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

without net neutrality we get an internet where the rich get preferential treatment, and where providers can pick and choose between people using their services. how is working towards that not unethical?

> rich get preferential treatment It's comments like these that make me not like net neutrality. There is no way you are going to stop people who spend more money from being able to enjoy better Internet connections. On the other hand, ISPs ought to be stopped, in general, from discriminating against traffic based on a) their desire to sell their own service that competes with it, or b) who you are connecting to.

Why should ISP 's be stopped from discriminating? A company that blocked Google would find its competitor's saturation bombing ads for "Google compatible" Internet service.

Followed by the tort lawyers saturation bombing ads for class action lawsuits alleging breach of contract and tortious interference in contracts.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#84

Post by zem »

macspoofing wrote: post #73
smtddr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I see a difference between your position and the position of the person you're replying. What you're saying is basically how I translated zem's comment in my mind. When he said "rich", I assumed the rich people who own the ISPs(or are friends of the owners) altering QoS for different sites/services. Or maybe I'm projecting my own thoughts onto zem's comment.

>When he said "rich", I assumed the rich people who own the ISPs Your interpretation is ... strange. The big telecoms are publicly owned. So those "rich people who own the ISPs" are shareholders? I'm pretty sure zem referred to "rich" and "poor" consumers of internet services. Not telecoms, not corporations.

actually, i was referring to producers - consumers are mostly affected by net neutrality due to what they do and do not get access to (as gated by the isps). however, with net neutrality thrown out of the door netflix can afford to pay for "up bandwidth", but e.g. a small competitor would be pushed out of the market.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#85

Post by zem »

macspoofing wrote: post #67
zem wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

without net neutrality we get an internet where the rich get preferential treatment, and where providers can pick and choose between people using their services. how is working towards that not unethical?

>without net neutrality we get an internet where the rich get preferential treatment Net neutrality does nothing for rich or poor. The rich already benefit from better connectivity and internet access. Net neutrality doesn't automatically make internet cheaper either, in fact, it may make it more expensive because the telecoms cannot complement their internet fees with money collected from Youtube and Netflix for pri…

see my reply to macspoofing - this is not about how fast your home internet is, it is about your ability to send stuff in the other direction. i'm not particularly concerned about cable tv because there isn't much leverage in having better access to tv shows; however, being better able to participate in a two-way flow of information potentially carries huge leverage abilities, and the people who already have influence/money/power will be further advantaged by the new system.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#86

Post by zem »

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #83
danielweber wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rich get preferential treatment It's comments like these that make me not like net neutrality. There is no way you are going to stop people who spend more money from being able to enjoy better Internet connections. On the other hand, ISPs ought to be stopped, in general, from discriminating against traffic based on a) their desire to sell their own service that competes with it, or b) who you are connecting to.

Why should ISP 's be stopped from discriminating? A company that blocked Google would find its competitor's saturation bombing ads for "Google compatible" Internet service. Followed by the tort lawyers saturation bombing ads for class action lawsuits alleging breach of contract and tortious interference in contracts.

right, but a company who blocked a startup competing with google would face next to no backlash, while (if they were big enough) severely disadvantaging said startup. heck, it doesn't take blocking - what if google loaded in 0.05 seconds and duckduckgo loaded in 1 second? i'm pretty sure that would push most of the users google's way.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#87

Post by rayiner »

DannyBee wrote: post #70
hgsigala wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Danny, in your view, what would the political ramifications be? Corporate lobbyists or actual politicians fighting against this label?

Both. The last time anything like this was proposed (and then it had the support of Google, etc), there was a huge showdown . The problem you have here is simple: The messaging is very hard to get to politicians in a way that makes it clear what a big deal this is, and how bad it's been. They have no concept of things like "broadband speeds". On one side, they get told by the telecom union, verizon, comcast, ex-FCC c…

You touch on a lot of good points, but I'd argue that there are some overarching issues as well. Fundamentally, our legislators and our regulatory bodies do not share certain values in common with a certain subset of technology companies. "Open" and "neutral" are words that have self-evident value to your typical Google engineer, but mean nothing to most people in government. The langua franca in regulatory circles today is neo-classical economics. That's why we're talking about cap & trade and spectrum auctions and insurance mandates.

Effective lobbying organizations have learned to speak the language. Environmental organizations these days aren't appealing to the duty of people to preserve the environment for future generations. They're talking in terms of externalized costs and how allowing pollution undermines economic efficiency.

From the FCC's point of view, the decision not to regulate the internet was considered a huge win. To this day, they crow about how abstaining from applying the heavy-handed common carrier regulations to internet service allowed it to blossom into what it is today. It's considered a massive success for policy that favors deregulation and private investment.

You can't get anywhere in this sort of environment speaking the language of "neutrality" and "openness." Post-Clinton, nobody in Washington speaks that language anymore.

And to be perfectly fair to everyone involved, nobody wants ISPs classified as common carriers, not with all the additional baggage that entails. Maybe Congress needs to legislate to give the FCC authority to implement certain "light touch" regulations over internet providers, but nobody wants to go back to the bad old days of oppressive 1950 s-1970's style regulatory burden.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#88

Post by rayiner »

revelation wrote: post #81
rayiner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android is part of the platform, but it's clearly not the capital intensive part of the cell phone infrastructure. That's be the CPUs, the DRAMs, the flash memory, etc. And there is nothing cheap about providing internet access. AT&T and Verizon lead the country in annual capital expenditure: http://news.investors.com/technology/091913-671712-institute... . > Meanwhile, we are being reluctant to regulate internet pro…

CapEx obviously doesn't tell the story, certainly not for companies like AT&T and Verizon. Try fundamentals; Moores has done good work for bandwidth, as media is still being streamed at 6 MBit. I'm not sure lawmakers understand this; there is no capacity problem . Technology is vastly ahead of growth and certainly consumer access to bandwidth. Meanwhile, internet providers are trying to tell lawmakers they need to ma…

> CapEx obviously doesn't tell the story, certainly not for companies like AT&T and Verizon. Try fundamentals; Moores has done good work for bandwidth, as media is still being streamed at 6 MBit.

It's hilarious for you to say CapEx doesn't matter, then invoke Moore's law, which is rooted in exponentially increasing CapEx! Guess who is in the top-5 of the CapEx list along with AT&T and Verizon? Hint: it's Intel.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#89

Post by rayiner »

ilyanep wrote: post #43
mjmahone17 wrote: post #11

What the court is saying is that, if the FCC refuses to classify broadband providers as common carriers, then, because they neither receive the same protections as common carriers nor have the same responsibilities, they can't be regulated as if they were common carriers. The FCC could change their rules to treat broadband suppliers as common carriers. However, that's something that big-name broadband providers don't…

What are the other ramifications of being classified as a common carrier?

An extremely vast, outdated, and oppressive regulatory regime applicable to common carriers.

Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

#90

Post by Kliment »

virmundi wrote: post #78
macspoofing wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>without net neutrality we get an internet where the rich get preferential treatment Net neutrality does nothing for rich or poor. The rich already benefit from better connectivity and internet access. Net neutrality doesn't automatically make internet cheaper either, in fact, it may make it more expensive because the telecoms cannot complement their internet fees with money collected from Youtube and Netflix for pri…

I would say that there is an unethical conflict of interest now with the at least Comcast. Comcast offers home security monitoring now. They could, they haven't said they would, start to require their home security competition to pay for access to the pipe to the home. It's the same thing with Comcast's on-demand vs Netflix. Comcast is going to favor its own offering to the detriment of the competitor. They should no…

Option 2 is unworkable because you just end up with company A providing access with no extras but preferential service for company B as a "valued partner" and excluding all of company B's competitors.
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