I'm all in favour of treating Internet access as the "fourth utility". It's clear it's become almost as essential to modern life as electricity.
I do however find the doom and gloom prognostications around Title II repeal to be incredibly hyperbolic and unhelpful. Fact is, Title II was only introduced in 2015. It's not like repeal in 2017 is going to end the Internet overnight.
There are three problems here:
1. The US has a harebrained notion of "competition" in creating regional monopolies.
2. It actually doesn't make much sense to build multiple last-mile networks. This is called an overbuild and is rather wasteful given the capex involved. It's also why strict rules are in place for utilities: it underscores the fact that utilities are monopolies and seeks to prevent overbuilds.
3. ISPs have been allowed to frame the debate on peering with outright falsehoods. Specifically, the likes of Comcast claim that it's "unfair" that the likes of Netflix can "push" data onto their network for free no less. Netflix of course isn't pushing anything. Comcast's customers are requesting it.
It's all just a thinly-veiled attempt to stifle VOD providers to prop up dying (yet profitable) cable TV businesses. The fact that politicians aren't able to or don't want to see through this is both unsurprising and disappointing.
Adopting net neutrality laws at a state level is an interesting idea that may force Federal regulatino. I mean what's worse that one set of Federal rules for a large company? 50 sets of state rules, that's what.
Even if just CA and NY adopt this, that's already a sizable amount of the population.
I'm also in the pro-NN camp, and have been for a very long time, and my observations match yours: the pro-NN propaganda this year is definitely a lot more about hype and emotions than it is about facts.
I think it's really just because it was successfully made into a mainstream political issue. So now you have to appeal to the mass audience, not just IT nerds; and we're just seeing the same tactics that is routinely used to whip up support (or opposition) to other stuff.
I'm actually weirdly uncomfortable about this. It's like being the guy who has cried wolf for many years, and now half of the village is there with you; but you see them pointing at rocks, logs etc, and insisting that these are all wolves, and we're all going to die now. It really made me question just how many people who happen to share my political positions, do so because they genuinely understand and agree with the policies, and not because it's just what you're supposed to do when you have a certain identity (liberal etc).
And yet the temptation to extract rents from content providers is higher than it has ever been. Just look at the market capitalization of Netflix today, which is about 20x compared to 2010.
I just can't imagine that ISPs won't make a grab for revenues, otherwise why spend money to lobby against NN? They're probably just waiting for the current furor to die down and sneak it in without people noticing.
That already happened, in 2014. Netflix made agreements with Comcast/Time Warner/AT&T/Verizon.
I think it will be interesting to see what happens now. I imagine the ISPs already feel they're very near the peak price:demand curve for consumers. Their monopoly is such that customers can't really say no unless they're willing to go with no access. So I'd agree that if there was going to be a squeeze it'd be on other large companies. But that also opens up the door to a far more motivated Google Fiber. And the lack of net neutrality opens up some interesting things - for instance a Netflix arrangement with an upstart ISP could offer free access at ultra-premium speeds to Netflix. That is something that the current monopolists could not necessarily match.
Non-negligible competition in the form of building out new fibre is basically never going to happen because of how inefficient it is in real economic terms.
Forget about all the political and business aspects -- the actual effort required to lay out new wiring, then run it to the home, is from an economic standpoint just pure deadweight loss.
1 cable is necessary. 2 cables is redundant.
Unfortunately, the ISPs have a point here that 'competition' in the form of multiple companies laying wiring to the same home is sheer folly.
Now what's the value proposition to an investor to fund direct competition?
If you shake someone down, there's more than one way to get paid off. It can come in the form of protection money, or you can just get them to buy you out. I'd imagine that Comcast et al will want to keep the tolls just low enough that it's in nobody's best interest to actually run more wiring.
Plus the ISPs can always buy off cash-starved local and regional governments, like they have been doing to Google Fiber, and delay the laying of new fibre indefinitely. There's no need to outlaw competition, just leverage the legal and administrative process to indefinitely fight over details like utility pole access.
It's definitely not weird to feel uncomfortable about all of this. In case I think the 'mob' was pointed in the right direction, but this sort of mass emotional hysteria is how very bad things also happen. How many people, actively involved in this issue, could accurately explain both sides' views? Both sides views of the future with/without net neutrality? I'm not sure of the answer, but it is going to be extremely low. And that is terrifying. It means that people are involved, often aggressively, primarily on an emotional level.
This hysteria is undoubtedly the reason you have things like bomb threats being called in on the FCC. Did the person who did that actually have any degree of understanding on the issue for which he probably was fantasizing about hurting or even killing people over? The safe guess there is probably not.
Great point, and I think the question we should all be asking ourselves is how do we know we're not the ones pointing at rocks and shouting wolf at a myriad of issues we don't really understand - but believe we do.
As soon as it comes to anything political, we're all suddenly experts predicting gloom, doom or salvation over every single policy issue. Logic says every person is probably wrong on average half of the time, yet every person believes they are correct in their political team playing 100% of the time. That can't be healthy.
>It really made me question just how many people who happen to share my political positions, do so because they genuinely understand and agree with the policies, and not because it's just what you're supposed to do when you have a certain identity (liberal etc).
Its worth thinking about how well reasoned and deeply researched justifications of positions make headway in a democracy. Expert opinion is expensive to acquire and not accessible to the majority. In a hierarchy of coalitions information is potential compressed at every level. If it gets compressed enough it might just end up as a left versus right or up versus down issue, with the justification for this reasoning only accessible by traversing up and down the hierarchy. I am not sure that this is a bad thing, butI can appreciate your concern about causes of an individuals motivation, especially in light of the potential for a propaganda apparatus to insert itself into my aforedescribed idealization.
Title II was only introduced as a result of the Open Internet Order (from 2010) being overturned. Net neutrality principles have been sanctioned by the FCC since 2005; removing title II designation and moving away from these principles is a shift that should not be understated.
> Net neutrality principles have been sanctioned by the FCC since 2005
And before that no ISP would even consider tiered pricing because there were no services worth tiering. Alexadra Petri has a really good analogy over at the WaPo:
>>It may not be technically illegal to bring a bear into a maternity ward, but we have, I think, started to live our lives with the expectation that nobody will do this. So if we put forth a rule saying, just so we’re clear, No Bears in the Maternity Ward, I would not expect anyone to complain that this was stifling innovation. In fact, if someone said “Hey, let’s get rid of that rule about not bringing bears into hospitals so we can restore the wonderful, competitive environment we had before,” I would wonder, “What exactly are you PLANNING that you need us to get rid of this relatively basic protection?”
If I might be so bold as to put forth one slight addendum to that analogy:
The rule about No Bears in the Maternity Ward only came to be after a number of cases where someone had brought a bear into a maternity ward, following a long history of bear-free maternity wards, in which time the rule had not yet been needed.
Not sure why people are downvoting this but Title II goes back to the Communications Act of 1934 [1] [2] [3].
This may have been revised extensively in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 [4] and with subsequent policy changes around treatment of "telecommunications services", "information services" and "common carriers" but the point remains: Title II has a long history.
Sorry; I (and presumably your original comment) meant the designation of Internet service providers as common carriers under Title II. This designation was applied in 2015.
ISPs were Title II until 2005 when Michael Powell, the Republican FCC chairman who was appointed by George Bush, reclassified the ISPs as Title 1 as part of the Republican plan to spur internet growth in the US via deregulation. (What we now call) Net neutrality violations followed soon after, but weren't widely reported until 2007 at which point people belatedly realized that Comcast had been violating net neutrality since 2005.
What resulted were a bunch of efforts to let ISPs remain Title I but still allow the FCC to enforce net neutrality on them. They failed because the ISPs would sue the FCC over each successive plan/rules.
The last case was Verizon vs the FCC and in that case the judge said the FCC could enforce net neutrality if and only if it classified the ISPs as Title II instead of as Title I.
The FCC then took a couple years trying to find a way around this, but ultimately decided in 2015 to jsut reclassify the ISPs as Title II, because they couldn't find any other way to enforce net neutrality while keeping the ISPs classified as Title I.
PS:
>>>> VERIZON: During oral arguments in Verizon v. FCC in 2013, judges asked whether the phone giant would favor some preferred services, content or sites over others if the court overruled the agency’s existing open internet rules. Verizon counsel Helgi Walker had this to say: “I’m authorized to state from my client today that but for these rules we would be exploring those types of arrangements.” Walker’s admission might have gone unnoticed had she not repeated it on at least five separate occasions during arguments.
I remember a time when you couldn't text to other carrier, while Europe had it since the 90s.
I remember how your carrier would not let you use facetime/skype etc....
Anyway, you are paying for access to internet and you should have it.
This is akin to letting a private entity building a private highway on a public ground, and the owner of the highway can say: Only Audis and BMWs are allowed here...
It's not "public ground". Electric companies and utilities acquire a mixture of easements, most of which are actually private, and listed on a property title.
Almost all copper/fiber/etc pass through public roads at some point (or beneath them to be more exact), so yes they are using public grounds for their infrastructure.
Same with your gas/electric/water line
While "Wireless" provides are given PUBLIC spectrum to use for their business (they pay for it, but that's besides the point).
So yes, 99% of internet out there uses some public areas at some point.
> I do however find the doom and gloom prognostications around Title II repeal to be incredibly hyperbolic and unhelpful. Fact is, Title II was only introduced in 2015. It's not like repeal in 2017 is going to end the Internet overnight.
So when you say "it was only introduced in 2015", what you really mean is "it was a heavily disputed situation for 20 years in with multiple court cases being won and lost by ISPs".
So yeah, this is the first time the regulatory framework is basically _gone_ even if it wasn't "Title II".
1996 Telecommunication Act: It was a legal gray area, particularly given dial up / dsl over telephone lines.
2002: FCC exempts NCTA by declaring it an information service, not telecommunications.
2005: NCTA wins at the Supreme Court
Open Internet Principles: 2005-2010 (i.e. Threatening to regulate)
Open Internet Order: 2010-2015 (Regulating, legally overturned)
Some action against Comcast throttling/blocking BitTorrent (in 2007-2009) ultimately resulted in action by the FCC in 2010, made rather toothless in 2014 with the provisions against blocking and throttling struck down.
So between 2010-2014 and 2015-2017 we have ~6 years of regulation, with the ISPs fighting it all the way (surprise surprise).
Just to clarify: I'm in agreement that we need net neutrality. I've just been around the block enough times to know that the FCC's latest action just isn't the end of the world.
> Just to clarify: I'm in agreement that we need net neutrality. I've just been around the block enough times to know that the FCC's latest action just isn't the end of the world.
That's contradictory. Either we don't need net neutrality, and we're all being silly caring, or we do need net neutrality, and the ruckus is justified.
I don't see how we could need net neutrality, have it just be repealed, but be told that it's no big deal and we should just go about our business and not care.
I agree it's not the end of the world, in the sense that now ISPs will start to behave badly again, and either Congress or the FCC will be forced to act/backpedal (of course, after a lot of harm has already been done), or, at worst, we'll have to wait for a sane administration to be in office to restore some regulation. But that doesn't mean it's not a big deal right now.
It was treated as such prior to that, implicitly (without the force of law). Policy was established to enforce it, formally. It wasn't just "introduced", it was tacitly accepted until there were known bad actors, because there was an expectation that acting in opposition would birth policy (it did). Pretending that traffic was treated equally before and after, is just another piece of mischaracterization. A piece that is used to distract from, and minimize, the problems with removing the policy.
> It actually doesn't make much sense to build multiple last-mile networks. This is called an overbuild and is rather wasteful given the capex involved.
Yes, obviously. Just like roads. Which is why local governments should design and operate all residential internet networks.
Or: Yes, obviously. A house really only needs one electrified wire, which is why we should turn over internet service to the power company.
Or: Yes, obviously. We don't want an internet that's wasteful in any part of its operations, which is why it should be run entirely by the federal government. In fact, it's about communications, so let's combine it with the USPS.
Or: Yes, obviously. Given its vital role in society and its origins as a DARPA project, it should be entirely built and operated by the US Army.
On the other hand, maybe what we need is a proper market in internet connectivity, with multiple providers using different technologies and approaches to meet consumer needs, and a strong regulator that keeps large companies from driving the small ones under.
As somebody who lives in one of the few competitive ISP markets in the US and pays $50/month for my gigabit home fiber connection, I think I prefer the latter.
They have this in France. They make ISPs share the lines and compete on their plans to send bits over those lines. If a line is upgraded, they share the cost.
Yeah, there are many good ways to do this. The US had a similar program up until 2005 where local phone companies had to allow ISPs to rent access to their last-mile wiring at mandatory rates. I like the idea, but I don't think it's practical in the US given business culture and the responsiveness of politicians to lobbying dollars.
The access was provided only to dry pairs ( think alarm wires) for DSL if the carriers had unused dry pairs ( they did not ). To do that, one needed to colocate in a certain number of COs ( large ), take at least a rack per CO ( $2.5K-5K ) even if one had only ONE subscriber. The rack was placed into a special area of CO (so only some COs had them - there was no requirement to build out that area ) and finally in order to terminate anything out of that rack one needed to buy a crazy expensive service from the CO carrier ( think $10-15k/mo ) to get a DS3 or OC3 out.
This meant that absolutely no sane ISP could really afford to do this as there would be no customers wanting to pay hundreds of dollars a month for IP service. ISP DSL access was a replacement for T1s selling for $1.5K/mo between loop and IP, not for residential.
As someone who got residential internet service for many years through a colocated DSLAM, paying something like $60/month, I think you are overstating your case.
Regardless, I agree it never took off as regulators intended, but my point was the intent was similar: mandatory shared last-mile infrastructure.
The other option is to re-instate line sharing. This would allow competition to immediately enter the market, with much fewer tax dollars spent. You would pay slightly more for competition (to cover the line rental) - but I would pay more to not have to deal with Comcast, even in the absence of the NN issue.
This completely side-skirts the rule that disallows states from making their own NN legislature.
One reason to be in the doom and gloom camp is that we now have an administration and an FCC that is openly hostile to net neutrality. The previous FCC was engaged in multiple rulings (against Comcast and others) in favour of neutrality, long before the Title II classification. There's every indication that, if presented with similar complaints in the future, the current FCC will not make similar rulings.
In the AMA we had with the New York State attorney, he said that the title II regulation came about because the courts struck down the usage of title I for the same thing. So we haven't actually had much experience with unregulated ISPs at this point.
> This is called an overbuild and is rather wasteful given the capex involved.
Wasn't the original phone system vastly over built and that is the reason that things like DSL were possible without having to run new wiring in many homes?
An overbuild in this context would be a whole separate network, which the US typically has in most places, namely the phone network and a cable provider. Nowadays people tend to exclude the phone network from discussions of broadband as ADSL speeds are inferior to cable (let alone fiber).
Phone lines had a filter on them to only pass through voice range frequencies. It's why you could hear the sounds made by a modem (or a fax for that matter). These were simply working around the filter.
xDSL was a result of removing that filter. Or, rather, moving it into the customer premises so instead of 2-3kHz, the copper line could support frequencies into the MHz range.
ADSL has a speed limit that follows an inverse square law to the distance the line travels to the exchange. Under ~1km ADSL2+ can get 20+ Mbps. At about 6km ADSL/ADSL2/ADSL2+ all cap out at about ~1.5Mbps and much beyond that it doesn't work at all.
4-5km is a typical average distance for a phone line, putting the max speed in the 5-8Mbps range. Pretty good for the early 2000s. Not so great now.
There are various workarounds for this, most notably reducing the copper distance. In Australia, the NBN (in part) uses FttN (fiber to the node) so Exchange -> fiber -> Node -> copper -> Customer. Limit the copper distance to 1.5km and put VDSL2 on it and you can get closer to 100Mbps.
So far today I've learned that a two year old policy being repealed is anti-gay, will stop women from getting abortions, will stop the black lives matter movement from speaking freely, and will prevent the #metoo movement from growing. Yes, all because the internet before 2015 was completely censored and prevented free speech.
If anything, I've seen a significant rise in censorship since NN was passed.
So far, I count five posts from your account just within this sub thread. Not one has any citations for claims that you make. This undermines the credibility of your arguments.
Please back up your statements by pointing to sources that support your interpretation of laws and events so that others can verify them.
If you're hearing this for the first time then you aren't getting your news from someone who is aware of the US Telecom Association v FCC case in which the court of appeals made it clear that because of first amendment problems, the FCC can't prohibit censorship by ISPs.
The court of appeals did no such thing. In your second link, the most recent decision, it wrote:
> Does the rule lie within the agency’s statutory authority? And is it consistent with the First Amendment? The answer to both questions, in our view, is yes.
This was the majority opinion, although one judge dissented and said it did violate the First Amendment.
The court did mention a clause in the FCC order then under consideration about ‘edited’ services, which is what your first link takes out of context. The order itself explicitly allowed for such services, so as far as I can tell, the court did not opine one way or the other on whether ISPs separately have a First Amendment right to provide them. This isn’t as big a loophole as it sounds, though. Describing the order’s requirements, the court wrote:
> That would be true of an ISP that offers subscribers a curated experience by blocking websites lying beyond a specified field of content (e.g., family friendly websites). It would also be true of an ISP that engages in other forms of editorial intervention, such as throttling of certain applications chosen by the ISP, or filtering of content into fast (and slow) lanes based on the ISP’s commercial interests. An ISP would need to make adequately clear its intention to provide “edited services” of that kind, id. ¶ 556, so as to avoid giving consumers a mistaken impression that they would enjoy indiscriminate “access to all content available on the Internet, without the editorial intervention of their broadband provider,” id. ¶ 549. It would not be enough under the Order, for instance, for “consumer permission” to be “buried in a service plan—the threats of consumer deception and confusion are simply too great.” Id. ¶ 19; see id. ¶ 129.
> There is no need in this case to scrutinize the exact manner in which a broadband provider could render the FCC’s Order inapplicable by advertising to consumers that it offers an edited service rather than an unfiltered pathway. No party disputes that an ISP could do so if it wished, and no ISP has suggested an interest in doing so in this court. That may be for an understandable reason: a broadband provider representing that it will filter its customers’ access to web content based on its own priorities might have serious concerns about its ability to attract subscribers.
It isn't two years old. Its been a heavily disputed area of law/regulation since 1996 with various patchworks that served similar functions. From actual regulation, to threatening to regulate if there was too much backlash, to regulating again, to regulating under Title 2.
1996 Telecommunication Act: It was a legal gray area, particularly given dial up / dsl over telephone lines.
2002: FCC exempts NCTA by declaring it an information service, not telecommunications.
2005: NCTA wins at the Supreme Court
Open Internet Principles: 2005-2010 (i.e. Threatening to regulate)
Open Internet Order: 2010-2015 (Regulating, legally overturned)
Regulatory framework repealed today: 2015-2017
------------------
"If anything, I've seen a significant rise in censorship since NN was passed."
Censorship by whom? A bunch of websites that are completely separate entities from ISPs that are monopolies for all intents and purposes?
'Censorship by whom? A bunch of websites that are completely separate entities from ISPs that are monopolies for all intents and purposes?'
Yes, those same web sites that are breathlessly telling me today the repealing NN is a mortal threat to my very existence, who then turn around and engage in censorship themselves.
> What? The break the internet movement didn't mention that part? That censorship by ISPs was ok under net neutrality?
1) You are in favor of censorship without clear disclosure.
2) You believe its acceptable such censorship should be controlled by government granted near monopolies.
---
You are talking about a ruling that mentions as an unrelated aside about the editorial right of content curation being legal and that right being more powerful than Title II due to the existence of the First Amendment. However, if its exercised, you are required to clearly disclose it to consumers before they purchase from you.
Without Title II, that requirement to clearly disclose no longer exists with a clear history of case law.
So...I'm really uncertain why you feel a requirement to disclose censorship before a purchase is made was an unfair regulatory burden.
I'm glad you have made it clear you were being disingenuous about your earlier complaints about censorship publicly.
> That would be true of an ISP that offers subscribers a curated experience by blocking websites lying beyond a specified field of content (e.g., family friendly websites). It would also be true of an ISP that engages in other forms of editorial intervention, such as throttling of certain applications chosen by the ISP, or filtering of content into fast (and slow) lanes based on the ISP’s commercial interests. An ISP would need to make adequately clear its intention to provide “edited services” of that kind, so as to avoid giving consumers a mistaken impression that they would enjoy indiscriminate “access to all content available on the Internet, without the editorial intervention of their broadband provider,”
> It would not be enough under the Order, for instance, for “consumer permission” to be “buried in a service plan—the threats of consumer deception and confusion are simply too great.”
And now, you've legalized the "buried in a service plan" option. Congratulations.
Thanks for the links. What you say is true, but not the whole truth. According to your third link, ISPs can censor as long they clearly disclose it to customers.
> The only real roadblock is money. Fiber ISPs are super cheap at scale, but are effectively impossible to bootstrap unless you are already a millionaire.
You're completely missing my point. Today everyone is screaming at the top of their lungs that because of the repeal of NN, ISPs will begin censoring speech, while these campaigns are being financed and propagated by the very entities that engage in wholesale censorship of speech.
I actually laughed out loud today when I saw a tweet from twitter saying that NN will allow for censorship. Twitter is a festering den of opaque censorship. No one sees the irony?
Let's suppose I put up a website where I accept articles about model trains. You submit articles about how to grow anthrax at home. I pass, in that they are not about model trains. Am I a shocking censor? No.
Or let's suppose you submit an article that is about model trains, but I don't think it's very good. I refuse it. is that censorship? Also no.
Twitter gets to decide what goes on their platform. If you don't like it, you can post it on some other platform. Or just make your own platform, one equally available to every Internet user.
If Comcast, on the other hand, decides to block a site because it's critical of them, then many millions of people will not be able to see it, and many of them won't be able to switch to a different ISP. That is censorship.
This feels too much like a similar argument that people have been making lately, where silencing voices can only be considered "censorship" if it comes from the government. I'm so tired of seeing this! It's part of a larger trend, where people arbitrarily narrow definitions in service of their argument. It's disingenuous, to say the least.
(For the record, I'm AGAINST censorship whether it's Twitter, Comcast, or anyone else who provides services to the masses. Small private "clubs" like your model train website are a different animal. And yes, obviously that means that there are grey areas that cannot be cleanly resolved. Such is life.)
Comcast is not your average private company because they hold a monopoly or oligopoly position in many markets.
In effective marketplaces, we trust the choice of purchasers to do most of the necessary work of making sure companies really serve the public. If some ISP in a competitive market decided to shut off access to all Republican-leaning news and commentary, we'd expect many people to switch to an ISP that didn't censor. But if Comcast did that, many people would just be screwed.
I agree that censorship is the pervasive silencing of voices. I disagree that Twitter can do that. Twitter may kick some people off their platform, but the Internet's open nature means those people can set up their own website. ISPs in noncompetitive markets, on the other hand, can indeed censor material, because many people will have no easy way to get that material.
That's why common carrier regulations predate the Internet by decades: some societal infrastructure is too important and too prone to capture to leave it up to the whims of individual executives. You could make the argument that Twitter is that kind of infrastructure. But given that only 20% of Americans use Twitter even once a month and a much smaller number use it daily, I think it's hard to say it's in the same category as the telephone or the Internet itself.
Ok, I can see where you are coming from, but I guess we fundamentally disagree on this. I see any company that provides a de facto public "square" as being equivalent on some level to a public space. (Much as malls were deemed to be a form of public space in the courts a while back, not that it is completely settled law.)
In my opinion, when a company's platform becomes one of the largest and most important venues for public discussion, they can no longer be considered a purely "private" entity in the same way. Corporations exist at the leisure of the public, as the public allows their charters to exist and defines (through law) the powers granted to the corporation. Expression of fundamental freedoms like freedom of speech defeats corporate concerns in this case. The public square must be open to the public, or democracy cannot function.
There are two key differences between Twitter and public space. One is that public space is owned by the public. The other is that public space is physically central to a community. All web sites are equidistant. The reason we don't have public space on the Internet yet is that we have a such a superfluity of private spaces.
I get your theory that private community spaces take on additional responsibilities once they're important enough to a community and maybe there's a way to legislate that. But it would be challenging. HN is definitely an important space for this community, for example. Every local newspaper is important too. The notion that we should have detailed federal regulations for exactly how to moderate a discussion thread plus a legal appeals process strikes me as unworkable in practice.
If we really want virtual public space, I think the thing to do is just to build or buy it. It would be easy enough to nationalize Facebook and Twitter for example; Congress just says "now they're part of the government", optionally paying the shareholders.
"Public" and "private" spaces are not so clear-cut. Not all public space is publicly owned. Again, see the shopping mall: https://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2015/03/complex-role-mall.... As the article points out, the notion of "public space" is really a sort of conflict zone with ever-shifting boundaries. (If you remember "free speech zones" you can see how even fully public space gets attacked when protest becomes inconvenient.)
I completely agree that it would be impractical to legislate moderation or terms of service, except on maybe a very coarse scale. I'm not sure what the answer is. Like much in the political sphere, this may just be a space where law and litigation has to fight it out with private industry until the end of time. A "solution" that satisfies all parties may not be possible.
Because we are not being honest. You want a private company to act as a public company. Nothing wrong with it, just that public should first buy them out.
You do realize that we had net neutrality regulation before 2015, right? It was just enforced via other means, means which were found by the courts to be overreach by the FCC in 2015, at which point the regulation was restored by reclassifying ISPs under Title II of the Communications Act.
The real solution to the problem, as I see it, is not even Net Neutrality (though I strongly support Net Neutrality).
The solution is to break the monopolistic stranglehold on last-mile internet service.
If it were possible to have competition in the last-mile ISP space, then consumers could vote with their wallets and choose those ISPs who supported Net Neutrality.
An alternate partial solution would be to force companies breaking net neutrality to report it on their customer's bill.
These are orthogonal issues. Net neutrality is important regardless of isp options. Not only on principle either, not everywhere will naturally have competition.
I am a big supporter of municipal fiber/broadband as a means to provide enough market competition such that net neutrality regulation is no longer needed.
You bring up a great point though, even if 100 of the biggest cities have municipal internet infrastructure, there are still lots of areas that wouldn't be covered and could benefit from basic NN regulation.
I don't necessarily think the issues are orthogonal, but I do think basic "don't be a dick" ISP regulations should be in place.
They're not. If NN is a user sought feature, true competition will bring it.
E.g. a few years ago cell phone plans sucked in the US. TMobile started some real competition. The other big ones had to follow. Unlimited data plans, demanded ages ago, have been recently introduced.
False dichotomies and appeal to the middle are absolutely types of word games. I am sick and tired of "moderate"-sounding weasley arguments that excuse corporatocracy and cronyism as "free competition".
There's only one grocery store in many towns, because the moment another chain opens, the dominant one lowers prices to below what the market can bear. The dominant chain takes temporary losses to drive competition out of business, then raises prices sky-high and returns to business as usual. This exact behavior occurs in many broadband markets.
Neither one of those is a true solution. For one, we currently do not live in a climate where competition is happening. Every NN supporter would love for that to happen, but for now it's not. Second, not every place can support competing ISPs. Do the people who live in the inner city or out in rural areas not deserve a neutral net?
We tried that in the US. The incumbents did weaselly things to make life difficult for the CLECs, and eventually lobbied Congress to remove the requirement.
LLU is essentially irrelevant today, it's fascinating that people keep bringing this up.
LLU happens at the exchange where the local loop edge is. But today's users want speeds which aren't practical over the long local loop. So the fibre was pushed out to street cabinets, FTTC, which are much closer to the end user and too small and numerous for LLU to work.
This makes good technical/engineering sense but it means there is no real competition. What the UK did about that is heavy regulation. The regulator decides how much can be charged to deliver the FTTC service from a consumer to a POP owned by an ISP as a wholesale price.
But most Subs don't want to pay the premium for FTC a lot of the high profile whining is from business's who think consumer BB is appropriate fr a business and want residential customers like pensioners and /or bt share holders to subsidize them.
when I helped sort out our BB for an office move in Farringdon (London) there is a lot of whining about BB but we manged to get a 70Mbs ELM in less than 2 weeks and 100Mbs in a quoted 3 months actually delivered less than 2
While RF transmissions keep getting better and better, sending data over a link where you own the entire spectrum (Copper, fiber) is always going to be faster to maket a given speed than doing so in an environment where you share spectrum and interferences with the rest of the world.
This week I'm upgrading my connection to gigabit up/down over DOCSIS 3.1. While my own wifi supports near gigabit speeds, it will be a while before whole neighborhoods can enjoy the same over cellular service.
If cellular data services were not capped (or throttled down, past an imaginary line the phone company rarely shares), then you might have an argument. As it stands, 4g phone service is only a replacement for cable or dsl services for the rarest of individuals. Windows software updates alone will blow you through your cap.
You're looking backwards through time. Look forwards through time. There are all sorts of ways the last mile problem can be solved more cheaply than wiring up every household, with high network speeds.
I see all these "can be" and "could be" type statements, but the reality of the situation is that we have not solved these problems yet, but today we have no net neutrality regulation. So it's ok to think of the bright future 5 years (optimistically) down the line while we've immediately taken a huge step back?
The FCC voted in 2015 to preempt state restrictions in Tennessee and North Carolina against municipal broadband [1][2], in response to a petition brought by the cities of Chattanooga, TN and Wilson, NC. This was struck down by the Sixth Circuit in 2016 [3].
It's going to be interesting to see this idea tested again.
Funny, I was listening to oral arguments on the Supreme Court last night on the way home from work. I'm not a lawyer, but my layman interpretation of what they were arguing (specifically in reference to sports betting) is that if the federal government chooses not to regulate something, they cannot also preempt state regulations.
I reserve to right to have completely misunderstood the legalese that I was hearing :)
I believe the 10th Amendment covers what you are thinking of.
>The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
If the Federal government chooses not to regulate it, then the states should be allowed to do so.
Edit: Here the FCC is choosing to not regulate Telecoms as "Common Carriers", so would not the states then be allowed to do so, barring other federal agencies that may be able to regulate "Common Carriers" (ala the FTC)? Honest question.
The 10th Amendment is not well regarded by the Supreme Court. In US v Sprague the Court said it “added nothing to the [Constitution] as originally ratified“.
Additionally, I think one could easily argue that the interstate commerce clause would prevail as States attempting to regulate interstate commerce. Otherwise, they could only enforce net-neutrality on connections entirely contained within their own state (good luck showing that's the case).
A lot of Services are headquartered in California: Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Hulu, Yahoo, Dropbox, Reddit, Imgur et al. These services could well band together and lobby very influentially to regulate neutral access to all in-state broadband traffic. I don't think it would be very smart for the telecoms to push their tier garbage in California.
Given that the FCC only recently lost a court case about its authority to preempt state laws banning muni broadband, how would this situation be any different?
Because this one would serve the interests of the rich and well connected?
I tend to agree that the FCC probably won't be able to ban states from enacting their own form of net neutrality, but I've seen the courts side with business interests with weak arguments more times than I'd like.
Not a lawyer but I believe a lot of the argument there hinged on municipalities legally being creations of the states, with only the powers the states choose to give them.
Courts are wary of letting the federal government regulate how states organize themselves.
I was under the impression that the majority voice in this argument (i.e. mortal American citizens) was completely against this. Yet it still ended up that they dismantled net neutrality.
If it's true that the majority wanted to keep net neutrality, then how come the majority was ignored? Maybe I'm missing something but this seems like a good example that our voice in the US doesn't matter beyond local things like whether or not your town will allocate money towards a new public swimming pool.
Go vote on whether or not you get a nice new swimming pool. The monopolists are the only ones that have a voice in grown-up topics. That's what I'm gathering from this. Accurate or alarmist nonsense?
> If it's true that the majority wanted to keep net neutrality, then how come the majority was ignored?
Because the majority (at least, as weighted for electoral influence in both political branches of government) has prioritized other things in voting for representatives. Legislation, whether direct votes or through representatives, involves not only opinions on particular questions, but opinions on the relative priority of questions, which effects how questions are aggregated and how those aggregated questions are answered.
The majority wants net neutrality, sure, but continuously says (by voting) that they care about it much less than they care about other things, and that they are willing to sacrifice NN tomget those other things.
I don't think there's any basis to say the majority voted for other things over net-neutrality. The Republicans mostly hold power with minority votes.
In generaly, the things that the majority want don't get enacted under the US system e.g. the tax bill with very low approval, so net neutrality falls into the general bucket of stuff that the majority want but that the Republicans don't want to them have.
> I don't think there's any basis to say the majority voted for other things over net-neutrality
An absolute majority of voters casting ballots for the House of Representatives in 2016 voted for either Republican or Libertarian candidates, both parties opposed to the FCC regulating for net neutrality and Congress legislating in favor of net neutrality.
It's a little less clear in the Presidential election, in part because you have to go beyond the top four candidates tomget a majority on either side, and detailed information on minor (often no-party) candidate positions on the issue can be hard to find.
And the Senate requires aggregating across different election years.
> If it's true that the majority wanted to keep net neutrality, then how come the majority was ignored?
Because the FCC isn't accountable to the public, majority or not. If a majority protest was directed at a congress person, you can be sure they would listen – we're the ones who vote them in/out. And that's exactly what we're going to do to get NN enacted as law.
The FCC is effectively controlled by 3 Republican appointees[1] who aren't accountable to anyone by Trump. They do not care about the will of the people. Pai is a former telecom exec and his only concern is lining the pockets of his cronies with more cash.
[1] Yes, I know Pai was appointed by Obama, on Mitch McConnell's advice. That's how these things work: 5 members, split between the two parties, with the incumbent administration's party getting the extra seat.
Forget about Net-Neutrality, it's gone, it's a dead horse. Let's see some competition.
I cannot believe that I live in the middle of the infamous Silicon Valley and only have a single choice when it comes to fast broadband, and that one goes down every other month for 3-8 hours.
I took the time today to inquire (again) with Wave/Astound, Sonic, AT&T about FTTH.
AT&T gave me the worst rep humanly possible. I spent 20mins on the phone with her for her to still utterly misunderstand my question, as she was apparently unable to understand or speak english. I already knew Gigapower was not available, I just want SOMEONE to tell me when they plan to offer service at my house, less than a mile from the Redwood City / Spring St CO. No luck.
Sonic did the usual "maybe if you sign up for DSL and you talk all of your friends and neighbors into signing up, we'll vaguely consider bringing FTTH in 2050".
Wave actually had me enter my info and said someone would check my neighborhood (!?) and get back to me within a couple of days.
I'd love to pay, whatever, $1000 to get someone to bring some FTTH here and subsequently make it available to neighbors, improve their local service offerings, etc.
I used to defend Sonic as a scrappy startup fighting the good fight for good people. But seriously, it's tiring and old. They needed to raise money to roll out fiber to more than 25 people in the sticks. They didn't and I think a large part of it I was Dane didn't want to give up control in return for capital. OK, that's his choice, but I'm no longer going to laud Sonic. It's basically a cute toy if you're lucky, not a real company.
I think building out FTTH networks, and doing so profitably, is harder than you give it credit for. Look at all of the issues that Google and Verizon have run into - and they have all of the resources in the world at their disposal.
VZ had nothing to gain from rolling it out, so they stopped. They put all their eggs in the net neutrality/complain that the network is congested basket.
Google might have some smart developers, but they know very little about rolling out a full ISP with fiber plant. Their webpass acquisition showed that. This is another case of Google's hubris tripping them up and landing smack on their face.
Real companies and organizations with good operations can roll out an all fiber ISP. It's not like it's never been done before. Your two counter examples were due to greed and incompetence.
I am pretty soon that it'll be right back as soon as the FCC is turned blue again, additionally it is still important to discuss the fallout of this decision.
The inter-state commerce clause allows Federal Law to preempt state law in this case. Congress has imbued the FCC with the power to regulate(see Chevron v EPA) exactly this. States have no reserved power to regulate the behavior of telecoms.
Well that is not really true depending on if the state has ever regulated something in the past. For example cars used to come with CA emissions standard as an item because CA regulated air quality before the federal government. It is not in cache right now but I believe they way it came down was if the state has regulated in the past and the state rules are stronger then the federal then the state wins.
CA got an exemption for CARB written into the federal emissions law at the time it was drafted. That's not the same as being grandfathered in just by virtue of having been the first to regulate.
I suppose CA could set net neutrality regulations for web users in CA connecting to web services in CA. I guess you could implement this if CA got their own internet country code; I think .ca is already taken though.
The post Southern Strategy GOP functions like a monarch -- If it's fashionable to curtail favor, i'm for it. And then when its not useful to me anymore, fuck you.
Like everything else, it's been trampled on and buried deep in the mud as everyone races to the "us versus them" false dichotomy. We won't get over this ridiculous pro-big-business wealth redistribution project until people can think beyond fighting for their favorite color.
I have to disagree, not because I want to though. One party has shown itself time and time again to put the interests of business far above those of the consumer and in many cases, act totally contrary to what opinion polling shows their constituents actually want on issues like gun control and net neutrality [1][2].
Given the fact that we only have 2 viable parties (yes it would be nice if that weren't the case but it is), what choice do we have but to dogpile on the party that responds at least somewhat to what constituents want and consistently supports pro-consumer policies? Sure both parties take money from wall street, but which one actually tries to protect the consumer from the excesses of wall street? People just keep saying "well they are all corrupt", don't look at who takes money and how much look at how their opinions and actions change after they take the money!
I'm against false dichotomy and false equivalencies. The only avenue I see is to make democratic reforms part of the democratic party platform where we prevent these problems in the long term. That will show if they can be a truly mature party, one that is willing to give up power to restore long term viability to our democracy.
I think the last election demonstrated very clearly that the blue team is not willing to give up power to make reforms anymore than the red team. I keep hearing people say this ("vote for the blue team because we can reform things from the inside!") but I'll believe it when I see it.
Was that part of the platform anywhere? I'm saying that the left has taken advantage of procedural stuff themselves (and therefore, haven't tried to fix the loopholes) and have for recent years suffered greatly because of it.
I honestly don't think that they've used as sleazy of tactics to get what they want (such as denying a president a supreme court appointment) but I don't have hard data to back that up other than a couple recent examples.
I'm saying they need to make it part of their platform. Someone has to be adult enough to realize that restoring our democracy to a more working order is essential. That means gerrymandering, campaign finance, filibusters etc.
California is most definitely within its rights to regulate businesses operating within the state. If an ISP wants to sell its service to CA residents, it can abide by CA laws.
Even if that's true, that's not even half the problem. Especially because of the public outcry, I wouldn't be surprised if ISPs even lower consumer prices to try and drive the point home of "told you so". Then, on the other side, they get to play mafia with internet-based businesses.
Can you elaborate on how this would fall under interstate commerce? As I see it, they'd be regulating how they treat in-state customers and their connections, not anything coming across the state-lines. i.e. They aren't saying Comcast isn't allowed to do things to a line for a customer in Utah.
> Can you elaborate on how this would fall under interstate commerce?
The Commerce Clause has been ruled to apply to something you grow in your own backyard and consume yourself because of a theoretical impact on the national market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn So it's very easy to see how regulating state internet regulations also falls into the purview of the federal government from there.
Sure, if the server and customer are both in Ca but if the server is elsewhere and they do their traffic shaping outside of state lines there isn't much that can be done.
I never paid much attention to what they got up to before the feds stepped in but I kind of doubt it was a last mile problem, once the packet got that far why mess with it?
But, knowing California, they'll do one of those "...and any packet destined for a customer in California."
Routing happens dynamically, but it very probably doesn't touch an ISP's pipes until very close to the "last mile" — especially when you're talking about the smaller ISPs who don't even have an inter-state presence.
> Sure, if the server and customer are both in Ca but if the server is elsewhere and they do their traffic shaping outside of state lines there isn't much that can be done.
Ignoring the around the world latency and assuming CA has a trans-pacific pipe to asia they could route all CA traffic out of country first. Would this disregard the "interstate" premise?
Definitely an interesting subject, but I would think with how heavily regulated cable and phone lines are, that California could enforce it on ISPs for their residents, at least.
Saying it's one thing, doesn't make it so, which is why fiat statements of fact that arent fact, get downvoted. Sales tax on ecommerce has demonstrated that there are decisions that are both yet-to-be-determined and will resolve in fantastically complicated idiotic ways.
Meh, people like to downvote instead of coming up with a rational counter-argument. In another thread I got downvoted multiple times for merely stating a fact.
I just see it as opportunity to hone my subtle trolling skills.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Going to go out on a limb here and say the very fact the FCC exists leads one to assume this is one of things delegated to the federal government -- at least in their opinion.
Pai has specifically claimed the FCC can pre-empt State-level Net Neutrality initiatives.
AFAIK, however, that's up to an appellate court to decide, which hasn't happened yet. (Another comment in another thread cites the recent case the FCC lost regarding its ability to pre-empt municipal broadband — see TN, NC v. FCC — which is probably somewhat dispositive.)
EDIT: also: "delegated to the United States by the Constitution". Note the emphasis. The FCC can assert all the authority it wants, but absent an Amendment to that effect, or a specific ruling on that question by a "court of competent authority", I don't believe the matter is nearly as settled as you suggest.
IANAL, but near the end he says he'll be including it as a condition to certain things that the state has control over. maybe that's how they get around that issue?
If you've seen my previous posts, you'll know I'm anti Title II, because I think it's a terrible way to achieve the goal. I think state laws, relative to local context, are absolutely the way to go.
The current NN repeal is working out exactly the way Pai said it would. As he cited, the problem is lack of competition. The solution is competition. All the discussion happening today is about how to start an ISP to prevent cable monopolies abusing their position.
The repeal is working exactly the way Pai said it would. It is encouraging new ISP entrants. Startup ISPs are the answer. NN supporters still don't realize they've been on the wrong side the entire time.
I am trying extremely hard to not purely lash out at you, but to civilly converse, here. But you're completely wrong.
Yes, competition would absolutely be better for everyone. There is not a single NN supporter out there who would not love more competition. But we still have to live in the real world. And in the real world, there flat out is no competition. And in many places, particularly rural and inner-city areas, there likely is not enough of a customer base to support multiple ISPs. And, as I said, we do not have competition now. Repealing Net Neutrality is this environment is nothing more than an anti-consumer move. It absolutely is required now, to protect consumer interests. If we were in an environment where market forces could work, then you would have an argument that NN is not needed. But, once again, to stress the point, we do not live in that environment. Getting rid of NN before that environment comes is utter foolishness, and does nothing but serve to turn the internet into Cable TV.
What do you not like about more competition and how does that relate to anarchists (which, depending on flavor, are often pro-competition and diversity in choice as it's often a prerequisite for a well functioning anarchic society).
His argument appears to be that it was too much paperwork for a startup ISP. I have to admit I have no idea if this is the case, but it seems like someone running cables/fiber across a private land should already be adept at filing out paperwork.
It's likely cherry-picked. There are many small ISPs who signed a letter saying otherwise:
> We [ISPs across the country] have encountered no new additional barriers to investment or deployment as a result of the 2015 decision to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service and have long supported network neutrality as a core principle for the deployment of networks for the American public to access the Internet.
"The main complaint consumers have about the Internet is not and has never been that their Internet service provider is blocking access to content. It’s that they don’t have access at all or enough competition. These regulations have taken us in the opposite direction from these consumer preferences. Under Title II, investment in high-speed networks has declined by billions of dollars. Notably, this is the first time that such investment has declined outside of a recession in the Internet era."
"The impact has been particularly serious for smaller Internet service providers. They don’t have the time, money, or lawyers to navigate a thicket of complex rules."
"the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association, which represents small fixed wireless companies that typically operate in rural America, surveyed its members and found that over 80% “incurred additional expense in complying with the Title II rules, had delayed or reduced network expansion, had delayed or reduced services and had allocated budget to comply with the rules.” Other small companies, too, have told the FCC that these regulations have forced them to cancel, delay, or curtail fiber network upgrades. And nearly two dozen small providers submitted a letter saying the FCC’s heavy-handed rules “affect our ability to find financing.”"
"a coalition of 19 municipal Internet service providers—that is, city-owned nonprofits—have told the FCC that they “often delay or hold off from rolling out a new feature or service because [they] cannot afford to deal with a potential complaint and enforcement action.”"
There are specific examples in the comments I quoted. Mr Pai named more specific examples in the transcript I linked to. You seem to be in a state of blind rage and unable to read anything.
If you'd like a deep dive level of information, you could try contacting some of the named companies and associations, like
> You seem to be in a state of blind rage and unable to read anything.
This is not how you do discourse on the internet — asserting the emotional state (or ability to read) of people on the other side of the screen. I'm quite calm, thanks; I simply reject Pai's agenda-serving statements as anything but agenda-serving (and also a little bit "appeal to authority", but I'm not feeling terribly inclined to chase that notion down the fallacy rabbit hole when I have so much work to do I'm only now breaking for lunch, so whatever).
Please do what you've repeatedly been asked in this thread and cite examples, not propaganda.
I really don't find a lobbyist organization's web site to be any more compelling than Pai's comments, sorry. They're going to offer just as much cherry-picked, agenda-serving propaganda as he is, and won't discuss the issue honestly or transparently either.
Until the line infrastructure is no longer owned by the monopolistic ISP / cable companies, talking about competition is all pie in the sky.
The problem is a portion of the US has no good network infrastructure. Another significant portion of the US has only 1 provider servicing them with decent internet connectivity.
A new market entrant will need years to dig and install adequate coverage for even urban US locations. Meanwhile, the US consumer will suffer shit service and outright market manipulation.
I do however find the doom and gloom prognostications around Title II repeal to be incredibly hyperbolic and unhelpful. Fact is, Title II was only introduced in 2015. It's not like repeal in 2017 is going to end the Internet overnight.
There are three problems here:
1. The US has a harebrained notion of "competition" in creating regional monopolies.
2. It actually doesn't make much sense to build multiple last-mile networks. This is called an overbuild and is rather wasteful given the capex involved. It's also why strict rules are in place for utilities: it underscores the fact that utilities are monopolies and seeks to prevent overbuilds.
3. ISPs have been allowed to frame the debate on peering with outright falsehoods. Specifically, the likes of Comcast claim that it's "unfair" that the likes of Netflix can "push" data onto their network for free no less. Netflix of course isn't pushing anything. Comcast's customers are requesting it.
It's all just a thinly-veiled attempt to stifle VOD providers to prop up dying (yet profitable) cable TV businesses. The fact that politicians aren't able to or don't want to see through this is both unsurprising and disappointing.
Adopting net neutrality laws at a state level is an interesting idea that may force Federal regulatino. I mean what's worse that one set of Federal rules for a large company? 50 sets of state rules, that's what.
Even if just CA and NY adopt this, that's already a sizable amount of the population.