Is anyone actually against net neutrality? I don't think I've ever seen a con argument.
Many do argue that the FCC shouldn't have the authority to regulate the internet, and often argue that idea to subtly change the subject.
If someone argues to abolish something, they should either argue in favor of a replacement, or argue that that thing should not exist at all. Unfortunately, I haven't heard even a flawed version of either argument.
Another faux argument I hear is the classic, "I am libertarian, and therefore must be against regulation of any form, and you can't change my mind." Obviously, that isn't an argument at all, and abusing libertarian ideology to look like an argument like that is seriously disappointing to any serious thoughtful libertarian, such as myself. This problem isn't specific to libertarianism either, but it is very popular in that community.
The core tenet to every position (not argument) I have heard against net neutrality is simply a position against regulation. The problem is that in the United States, we need to regulate ISPs, for several reasons:
1. There isn't enough competition: There are 6 ISPs in the US that control the majority of the market, and the majority of Americans are left with only one choice for >20mbit internet.
2. Net Neutrality is necessary to cultivate a free market of businesses that use the internet. Without net neutrality, the already centralized market of ISPs would cultivate centralized markets for each type of business that uses the internet.
TL;DR It is totally reasonable to be wary of regulation, or of the implementation of regulation. It may even be reasonable to consider net neutrality to be worthless or unnecessary in a truly free market, that has real competition between ISPs, but that isn't today's reality, so we would need to tackle that problem first.
But yeah it might be nice to make it just work well, without any respect for and to whom or what. All that matter is how. It should work well, how do we do that?
Some cities are deciding to build their own infra. Good. Now if only they'd explicitly adopt their surrounding rural areas and include them in the program. Because this same FCC is dropping the subsidies for rural internet and telephone.
That's just a silly argument.
If we are going there, let's first have the ISPs vacate all public rights of way and return all government subsidies.
The fringe refuses to see the massive risk of not supporting net neutrality by government.
In fact, if net neutrality regulation creates additional compliance costs it might actually reduce competition by increasing the barriers to entry for new ISPs.
2. I think most people would agree that the Internet should generally remain a level playing field for all businesses.
However, it's not clear that net neutrality regulation is necessary to maintain such a level playing field. It wasn't necessary in the past. Moreover, there is potential for consumer benefit associated with some kinds of content discrimination, which net neutrality regulation might unjustly prohibit.
The reality is that if the US broadband industry was competitive we wouldn't be having this argument. We should fix that first, then see if we still need net neutrality regulation.
There are short-term consumer benefits, in my country we have zero-rated services, where browsing certain sites costs no data. However this completely undermines the concept of the free market. Any competitor to the zero-rated service has a massive hurdle to overcome, either competing with free, or paying the ISP to have the same deal applied to their service.
And there are also cases of abuse. Mobile operators began charging roughly $2 per MB of data for any VOIP traffic, forcing consumers to use standard calls.
By refusing to subject ISPs to regulations, we subject the Internet to the whims of the ISPs.
How could this possibly be zero? If a town's ISP has a bandwidth of 100Gb/s and has a demand of 200Gb/s by their customers, they can:
- prioritize certain bits such as live streaming that can't be slown down without degrading user experience, unlike text (current solution)
- slow down everything as forced by FCC's Net Neutrality (which would make live streaming unwatchable)
- invest in bigger infrastructure and pass the cost down to consumers (which is not zero cost as you claim)
So there you go. Another fun fact, for anyone that has lived through the 80's and 90's, the FCC censored TV and radio to hell with list of words, topics and images that could not be used on public broadcasting as it was considered to be public utility. If the FCC considers the internet public utility in order to impose Net Neutrality, they will be granted the same power as they were on tv. If you think twitter censorship sucks, wait for what's coming when Trump or another administration decides to impose similar rules through the FCC with the excuse that it's now a public utility and that using bad words (against politicians or else) at a certain hour is bad for kids. Don't forget that the boss of the FCC is nominated by Trump. People love asking the government for more regulations even though they always end up paying a high price for it. Just be careful what you ask for is all I'm saying.
If you follow a bit about what happened the past 100 years of new government agencies rules is that they have _always_ yes, _always_ grown into thousands and thousands of regulations each year. But yeah, I'm sure this time it won't happen...
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0MCZ3FJXJJs/UA7zeOEIanI/AAAAAAAAFl...
Well, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality#United_States this rule Pai wants to repeal only took effect in 2015:
"On 26 February 2015, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled in favor of net neutrality by reclassifying broadband access as a telecommunications service and thus applying Title II (common carrier) of the Communications Act of 1934 as well as section 706 of the Telecommunications act of 1996[92] to Internet service providers.[93][94][95][96][97][98] On 12 March 2015, the FCC released the specific details of its new net neutrality rule.[99][100][101] And on 13 April 2015, the FCC published the final rule on its new regulations.[102][103] The rule took effect on June 12, 2015."
A core design principle of the Internet since the beginning has been the "end-to-end principle", which was that the job of the network was to distribute the bits between end points. FCC rules concerning network data go back to the 1960s.
The FCC began rule-making on network neutrality in the mid-2000s, in direct response to various ISPs blocking traffic.
Where in the network neutrality order did the FCC impose censorship on the Internet?
IMO, if you're selling more than you can provide, you're already doing it wrong...
It's not acceptable to prioritize some content over another when having the appropriate infrastructure would solve the problem.
> invest in bigger infrastructure and pass the cost down to consumers (which is not zero cost as you claim)
People will be paying for the product anyway, I don't see anything wrong with charging the cost of production/maintenance + profits (altough I suspect their profits might way higher than they should, and not being used to improve the ISP's as they should. I do not live in US though), that's what most other sellers around the world do and I really believe it's the most appropriate model.
Have you ever thought that many people are fine with the deal they're currently getting and don't have the money to pay for more? Maybe that's great for rich people, but for lower income folks, the way ISPs optimize bandwidth right now is fine, they've probably done tons of testing to make it the less noticeable possible while providing the best prices for their customers (market at work). Forcing high bandwidth for all people even those that don't care will leave people out of internet connection at all as they won't be able to pay at all. So people won't be able to pay anymore but at least your principles will be respected, sounds like the classical case of unintended consequences of leftists policies that always end up hurting the poorest while giving good conscience and a good deal to the rich. Not a big fan of that kind of things personally.
My ISP is the only game in town for me, and they know that. They have zero incentive to lower prices or raise quality.
You should maybe also remind yourself that some people are not in the position to move around the country. You should not equate your own capabilities in life with those of others.
After living years in Syria and then in Peru, I can say that small towns folks most likely to leave to big cities are not the ones that are well off but the poorest one on the contrary in order to find a job to sustain them. So yeah, I would say it's mostly rich people that can afford to stay in small towns, the rest move to bigger places where there is more chance in finding people willing to invest in them even for low skill workers.
Suggesting that the situation in Syria and Peru is the same as in the US is also rather disingenuous. It is with high probability not.
And even if it was so, does that mean the ISP gets the automatic right to fuck over everyone left because they didn't move? Does that right extend to other things? Should water utility not be provided to them because they didn't move?
The fact that they refuse to invest money they will never get back doesn't mean they want to "fuck you over". Have you ever thrown money out of the window just for fun? Well now you understand these ISPs' point of view.
> Should water utility not be provided to them because they didn't move?
If there's only one person left in town, should a billion dollar installation still be maintained for that one person? What if it's 5 people or a couple of hundreds? Isn't it selfish too to demand a whole billion service industry (internet, water etc) to invest and work just for you and run their business as a loss just because you refuse to move? Western countries are running with trillions of dollars in debts because of these kinds of "investments", not sure if this is sustainable (surely hope so but doubt it). I would personally love to live in the middle of nowhere in beautiful Peru with high speed internet, clean water and top infrastructure, I would never demand anyone to pay for it for me however.
The ISP equipment usually in deployment is incredibly low maintenance and cost. And then "piping the internet" to the customer is exactly 0 cost.
New infrastructure is a topic completely orthogonal to NN and has little to no influence in both directions.
Where in the network neutrality order did the FCC impose censorship on the Internet?
No, that's not how business work. If customers are not happy with a service they can shop elsewhere. The business is not forced by government to improve its infrastructure, just by customers pressure. The fact that some places only have one ISP is because government over-regulate right to pass and install fiber.
> Where in the network neutrality order did the FCC impose censorship on the Internet?
Once you turn the internet into a public utility, it gives the power to the FCC to censor it anyway it wants, just like TV or radio. Of course it won't be done overnight. Just wait for a big nazi/antifa/pedophile/terrorist internet scandal that would lead to a tragic death, than people will rush in a bill that says "sorry folks but we can't allow people to publish anything they want, think of the children" just like they did with public broadcasting on tv and radio. Making the internet a public utility is a requirement to pass these censorship laws, it's a first step. Censorship always happens in small steps. Think of the patriot act, if you give the government the power to take your rights away, they eventually will. Although to be fair they already have that power, but this will basically give them even more justification and power.
For much of the US, that isn't the case with ISPs.
Limiting how many companies can dig up the streets is a good thing. Imagine if every delivery company wanted to pave a road to your house.
Where the government screwed up is not making the last mile common to all ISPs.
Net neutrality is simply tha concept of treating access to the network (in this example the ISP and the greater internet it connects to) where it does not prioritize one set of bits and simultaneously and purposefully (and typically for the exchange of money) slow down access to something else.
Bandwidth management, or the idea of prioritizing on the fly to ensure quality service, does not inheritantly violate those principals. What does is if the video people paid th ISP money for faster bits and to slow down competitors and/or the ISP slowing down competitors to promote its own services.
Notice it also has no legal framework for specific types of access or information, simply that the pipe should be neutral and non-interfered. In fact, net neutrality laws can help improve privacy and gives more standing for companies to fight back against gov surveillance
If my ISP is hitting peak throughput at 8pm on monday night, it makes sense for high priority traffic to pay for priority (streaming, telephony, etc), while low priority traffic (bittorrnet, dropbox updates, etc) slow down because they are unwilling to pay.
I don't think outright blocking is justified or even purposeful slowing down (rather than speeding other stuff up). But i don't think treating everything the same is economically justified.
Your argument is usually what I tell people when they ask about NN. It's a lot more complicated than treating every packet equal because at capacity networks want to manage bandwidth.
You could also think of it this way, why should the general user be required to subsidize a heavy BitTorrent user's traffic? Now maybe ISPs shouldn't oversell in the first place, but the operating state of a network is congestion.
Your argument is very moderate and is not NN, but it's close. I would tend to agree and prefer what you describe: content neutral bandwidth management. But that's pretty much an oxymoron.
This has the effect of enforcing net neutrality, which is why everyone is in favour of it. However it also gives the FCC the power to censor content, like they did with television and radio in the past.
Agreed, but net neutrality regulation never claimed it would. The concept of net neutrality accepts the fact that we do not (and cannot) have a free, competitive market for internet access, and tries to ensure that incumbents do not engage in anti-consumer practices that they wouldn't be able to do _if_ it were possible to have sufficient competition.
> 2. I think most people would agree that the Internet should generally remain a level playing field for all businesses.
> However, it's not clear that net neutrality regulation is necessary to maintain such a level playing field.
It's not, but no one seems to have any better ideas. Simply ditching net neutrality is nearly guaranteed to erode that level playing field. I'd be happy to entertain other ideas to maintain it, but no one seems to be presenting those, and the FCC is removing something useful without proposing an effective replacement (or any replacement at all, for that matter).
> It wasn't necessary in the past.
Wasn't it? Isn't the current net neutrality regulation a direct response to anti-consumer behavior by ISPs?
> Moreover, there is potential for consumer benefit associated with some kinds of content discrimination, which net neutrality regulation might unjustly prohibit.
The only benefit I can think of is short-term "lock-in" type behavior: stuff like Spotify streaming not counting toward your data cap. All that does is make Spotify more enticing and get users locked in, all due to an entirely synthetic advantage.
While this provides a short-term benefit to the customer, it provides long-term negatives as Spotify's competitors are forced out of the market, and new upstart competitors don't stand a chance.
Uncapped streaming is a fairly minor thing they could do (some streaming services already do this, and I'm pissed they're able to get away with it) and likely wouldn't hurt competitors enough to kill them, but unwinding net neutrality regulations would allow them to engage in crippling anti-competitive behavior, like making deals with ISPs to charge _their_ customers more for access to other streaming services.
> The reality is that if the US broadband industry was competitive we wouldn't be having this argument. We should fix that first, then see if we still need net neutrality regulation.
We can't. It is absolutely not in the public's interest to allow just anyone to dig up roadsides and bury cable, and radio spectrum is too scarce a resource to allow robust competition. Do you have any ideas as to how to get around that?
Realistically how much more of an issue will this be than it is now? In the UK, mobile providers already offer 6-month Spotify/Netflix/whatever subscriptions as a sweetner with your contract, which seems like the same issue to me but in a non-technological sense. New upstarts don't have the money nor the brand recognition to make that happen.
Netflix has become a part of the Collective consciousness, arguably on a similar level to googling something. Even with all the net neutrality laws in the world behind them I pitty the upstart who think they can go up against the current big players in the market (which includes content studios) and win. Spotify can't be said to have the same sort of recognition but Apple Music probably can, owing to it being featured on every iPhone and iTunes installation. New upstarts can't afford to release a smartphone to push their services, either.
It's capitalism. ISPs love short-term customer benefits, because the customers love them too. Once their customer base are fed up with their free Spotify sub, the ISP will have had 12 months to come up with the next thing. And so it will continue in theory until we all have huge data caps as standard anyway so none of this will matter. And then somebody will come up with a way to double the size of Netflix streaming video for a few more pixels and then we start again.
Yes you can. Have the municipality be the one responsible for running fiber from reaidences to common access points. The the ISPs all have equal access and you can change ISPs very easy.
But again, politics and encumbent ISPs will prevent this.
Yes it is.
> It wasn't necessary in the past.
There have been abuses already. I don't expect ISPs will dive into full-blown abuse immediately, but they will ease their way into it.
> Moreover, there is potential for consumer benefit associated with some kinds of content discrimination
Could you give an example, because I certainly can't think of any.
> The reality is that if the US broadband industry was competitive we wouldn't be having this argument. We should fix that first, then see if we still need net neutrality regulation.
Absolutely! That is exactly the problem I was trying to express. To abolish net neutrality while the market is in this state is clearly a bad idea.
Abolishing net neutrality will not do anything to promote a competition, so it's important that we start finding things that will.
I believe much of the opposition to it on my side of the aisle is based on the flawed assumption that any policy instituted during the Obama administration was a bad policy.
My preference would be that Congress passed legislation making net neutrality the law of the land, but in the absence of that, Title 2 classification with FCC forbearance is better than nothing.
The most convincing argument IMO is that it hurts people's internet access by sniffling innovation. It happened in India when Facebook tried to provide free "basic internet" access to poor rural Indians [1]. It was blocked on the ground of net neutrality since although it would provide access to very useful sites (weather, news, wikipedia, and yes, facebook), it was a sort of walled garden. Considering the alternative of no internet access or limited internet access, I think most people would agree that basic internet could have been a life saver to these people.
The other strong argument against net neutrality is that it's a trojan horse for internet regulation. When you have a legal framework for a regulatory body to tell and ISP you have to provide equal aaccess to "legitimate" content, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to consider that the natural extension of this is to tell the ISP they must block all "illegitimate" content
I think their walled-garden approach, if it received an overwhelmingly positive or at least unquestioned reception, would have set an even more dangerous precedent.
Governments don't (AFAIK) set up internet services as social welfare for the poor in other countries. Facebook doesn't have any borders. Unless they're actively told to keep their rabid growth in check, they will just keep going.
Nothing directly against Facebook here, but I definitely think it's better that the poor and uneducated throughout the world are not normalized into a Facebook(TM) world of knowledge. We've seen what's happened with a much milder and more open situation in the United States (and elsewhere) quite recently.
> Key findings include the following: 10 percent of all Americans (34 million people) lack access to 25 Mbps/3 Mbps service. 39 percent of rural Americans (23 million people) lack access to 25 Mbps/3 Mbps. By contrast, only 4 percent of urban Americans lack access to 25 Mbps/3 Mbps broadband.
Majority do have broadband access but it’s still a problem for some
https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/broadband-progr...
I disagree. The argument isn't sound anywhere.
For an ISP to limit its users to a subset of the internet causes several problems:
1. It forces users to use one set of services. That means a user with Facebook-only internet has no hope of avoiding Facebook and its abhorrent data-collection.
2. It prevents competition. Google+ would be unable to compete, since it does not exist on Facebook internet.
3. It stifles free software. The vast majority of free software projects have little to no budget. If they must pay for competitive bandwidth, they face an uphill battle against proprietary products produced by wealthy corporations.
4. It favors centralized networking. If all of your users are constrained to a subset of the web, that likely means they cannot connect directly to each other. This totally rules out mesh networking, bittorrent, private voip, etc. On a non-neutral web, users will be constrained in their ability to run there own servers. This is already a problem with many ISPs disallowing public IP addresses.
In other words, I want to be convinced that:
1) There is a problem here at all. The regulation that is being repealed was only introduced 2 years ago; how did we get along before that?
2) This problem can be solved by this regulation (not all regulation achieves its goals, and sometimes it is even counter productive).
3) Regulation is the best/only solution for this problem (what other solutions to the problem described in 1 have been proposed, and why are they not suitable)
I think serious answers to these types will be far more convincing than the typical simplified arguments along the lines of "What if comcast creates a competitor to netflix and prioritizes its own streaming service".
TL;DR: I think some libertarians are not so much against regulation as they are skeptical of it, and are willing to be convinced that certain regulations are good, on a case-by-case basis.
Many (including myself) have for years thought that this wasn't a problem. How did we get along before this?
But there are dozens of cases before NN was codified, where ISPs were blocking and slowing down traffic. One of the most high profile was how Comcast was slowing down Netflix in the NY Metro Area.
After the rules went into place, Netflix speeds just magically increased, and Comcast said it was a coincidence. Uh huh, sure.
there was a technical reason for the performance improvement; netflix started peering with Comcast: http://www.businessinsider.com/paid-peering-explained-2014-2
but let's consider the world where the pipes stayed the same size; suddenly the lawyers say you have to stop shaping Netflix traffic (shaping means randomly dropping TCP traffic in order to signal to both ends that congestion exists in the network and they should slow down sending). Lack of shaping means congestion and slowness for all content traversing the same pipe, not just the heaviest users. So people watching Netflix get a slightly better quality and less buffering, but it takes 10 seconds to load any website traversing that pipe.
Similarly, this post also doesn't read as the beginning of a debate or a discussion; it reads as the end of one. All three of your demands taken together imply "Net Neutrality doesn't matter. If any regulation is not perfect then we should get rid of it", which is both a ludicrous position to hold on NN, and a facet of "I am against all regulation" which the intro supposedly distanced itself from.
An appeal to reason is all well-and-good, but using it as a sandwich for an obvious Nirvana fallacy, makes your points impossible to swallow.
Also I don't think it's fair to say that since I'm not convinced by what you consider reasonable answers therefore I'm the one who is wrong, instead of entertaining the possibility that those answers are not as convincing as you think, to someone who isn't already convinced.
1) There is a problem here at all. The regulation that is being repealed was only introduced 2 years ago; how did we get along before that?
Yes, there is a problem here. ISPs have already started overstepping the bounds by extorting money from Netflix. T-mobile has a plan out right now that gives you unlimited Netflix, but rate limits everything else. This is a violation of the principles of Net Neutrality.
Yes, there is a problem.
There wasn't much of one before, because the ISPs were very careful not to upset the balance. In the past five years though, they've started seeing what they can get away with. Net Neutrality regulation is a response to the ISPs testing the waters.
2) This problem can be solved by this regulation (not all regulation achieves its goals, and sometimes it is even counter productive).
Probably. It's fairly easy to say "all ISPs have to treat all packets the same." Then have yearly audits of internal routing infrastructure.
3) Regulation is the best/only solution for this problem (what other solutions to the problem described in 1 have been proposed, and why are they not suitable)
I don't believe regulation IS the best solution. Not so much because the regulation itself is bad, but because each set of people who get into power have a different idea of what the regulations should look like, so it ping-pongs back and forth ad-infinitum.
I think the best solution is for towns to build municipal fiber that competes with existing ISPs. The infrastructure could be rented out to local ISPs who compete on the publicly-owned lines. If Comcast wants to charge people out the ass for shitty service that rate limits (or hell, censors) certain websites, go for it...but there are 20 other local companies who give faster speeds for cheaper prices that support Net Neutrality.
The problem is, Comcast generally stops this kind of market competition from happening via propaganda campaigns and jamming through state laws that prohibit it. A municipality entering the market is still a free-market competition, so it should be an option supported by libertarians.
In their minds, any form of goverment is evil, and if it didn’t exist, we’d all live in paradise, free from chemtrails and tax sheets.
After going through these arguments and others linked here, I can safely say it's all excuses and handwaves; a thin veneer over an anarachist misanthropy.
Which isn’t too different from other conspiracy circles actually.
I oppose net neutrality regulation. In principle, I don't think there's anything wrong with an ISP prioritizing certain kinds of traffic over others, so long as it does not have an anti-competitive effect.
For example, I don't see how Netflix paying Comcast to zero-rate Netflix traffic is fundamentally different from Amazon contracting with mail carriers to subsidize the cost of shipping for Amazon purchases, or even -- to use an example another commenter made -- an appliance manufacturer contracting with electrical utilities to subsidize the cost of electricity used by their appliances. So long as Comcast makes its zero-rating program available to all content providers -- including their own -- on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, I don't think there are any competition issues.
I've heard people argue that zero-rating makes it harder for smaller content providers to compete, since they won't have the resources to subsidize their customers' traffic. As I said in another comment, that's just the nature of business. Being big affords you certain advantages, like economies of scale. This makes it easier to compete on price. Smaller companies have to compete in other ways.
In my view, the real problem with the telecom industry in the United States is a lack of competition [0], a problem caused at least in part by municipal [1] and state [2] governments. With more competition, net neutrality would be a non-issue. Consumers would just stop using ISPs that unfairly discriminate between traffic.
[0] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/410353/net-neutrality-...
[1] https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-ju...
[2] http://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblock...
Comcast's customers are requesting the data; if Comcast were a second tier backbone, or an AS between two others, then it would make sense to charge for traffic, as it doesn't benefit. But the traffic going to Comcast is there to benefit its subscribers, without which, Comcast doesn't make enough money. The most bizarre thing is that if the customers were to upload the same amount of data back to the sites, then they wouldn't be charged, as the data was symmetrical!
Why would an ISP be able to charge other AS's for sending traffic to its own customers? If there were even a single competitor in that region, this dynamic would change completely.
I don't think there's anything especially wrong with this business model. It's similar to how a newspaper charges both readers and advertisers for access. The disadvantage is that you have to keep both parties happy.
Incidentally, if customers uploaded the same amount of data as the Internet services, Comcast wouldn't get transit fees but it would get additional revenue from the customers, so I think things would balance out.
Yes, but this is where your analysis breaks down: it's not a free market. The customers are a captive market.
> Similarly, Comcast provides access to customers, which the Internet companies who provide those services (and associated CDNs and transit providers) want and are willing to pay for.
The Internet companies are only willing to pay because they have no other alternatives. They only pay because Comcast has a monopoly and thus acts as a gatekeeper, and then only because Comcast has such a large market share that refusing Comcast would deprive them of a significant part of the market. Calling this "voluntary" participation in a two sided market is absurd. Blackmail is what it is.
When anybody else than Comcast tries this, they are laughed at and told to piss off.
> I don't think there's anything especially wrong with this business model.
There's plenty wrong. The subscribers have already paid full price and now Comcast wants more, this time from the Internet companies, without which Comcast would have nothing to sell.
> It's similar to how a newspaper charges both readers and advertisers for access.
This is just a bad analogy, again. Newspaper readers aren't paying full price for the newspaper, and they are not paying for getting access to the adverts.
> Incidentally, if customers uploaded the same amount of data as the Internet services, Comcast wouldn't get transit fees but it would get additional revenue from the customers, so I think things would balance out.
This just plain incorrect. Comcast wouldn't get a penny more from it's subscribers. Internet access is inherently asymmetrical. Were subscribers to use their upstream more, it would not result in any more revenues.
> This is just a bad analogy, again.
Not to mention a poor choice of industry to use for comparison: it's not like the newspaper business is doing all that well these days.
So, I put up a small SaaS that I want people to use. In your world, I now have to go knock on the door of all the ISPs out there to pay them for access to their customers?
Can't have that if there is no competitive ISP you can change to, if you don't like this NN violating ISP.
> For example, I don't see how Netflix paying Comcast to zero-rate Netflix traffic is fundamentally different from Amazon contracting with mail carriers to subsidize the cost of shipping for Amazon purchases
This analogy breaks down immediately, because Comcast is already getting Netflix traffic for free. There is no toll that needs to be subsidized, no charge that needs to be zero rated. Comcast is just blackmailing Netflix for protection money.
> or even -- to use an example another commenter made -- an appliance manufacturer contracting with electrical utilities to subsidize the cost of electricity used by their appliances.
Another bad analogy. There is no "cost of electricity" equivalent incurred by Comcast. The Netflix bits are free to Comcast.
> So long as Comcast makes its zero-rating program available to all content providers -- including their own -- on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, I don't think there are any competition issues.
You do realize that this effectively sets up Comcast as the gatekeeper to the Internet? Do you really want Comcast to be able to decide what's on your Interwebz?
That's even before we get into the fact that requiring to contract with Comcast before you can offer any online service is a barrier to entry and a competitive barrier.
The whole idea is absurd. This way lies the Balkanization of the Internet and Internet fiefdoms.
We already tried something similar and it was a shitshow. Remember how insane and difficult it was to offer premium and value add SMS services back in the days, when you had to cut deals with every single cell phone company before you could offer your service?
> I've heard people argue that zero-rating makes it harder for smaller content providers to compete, since they won't have the resources to subsidize their customers' traffic. As I said in another comment, that's just the nature of business. Being big affords you certain advantages, like economies of scale. This makes it easier to compete on price. Smaller companies have to compete in other ways.
So that's your solution? Screw the small guys?
Lets institutionalize a protection racket, so that only big players can offer service because they can afford to grease the right palms.
> In my view, the real problem with the telecom industry in the United States is a lack of competition [0], a problem caused at least in part by municipal [1] and state [2] governments. With more competition, net neutrality would be a non-issue. Consumers would just stop using ISPs that unfairly discriminate between traffic.
Now you are on the right track. However none of this helps with the immediate problems. Most people have a monopoly provider. You can't change providers if there are no options. Even if we start now, there won't be another option for years.
Meanwhile monopoly providers will use their monopoly to extract monopoly rents, both from customers and online services, best they can. We should not give them permission to gouge more by repealing NN.
As to your list of problems, you forgot to add the FCC killing line sharing due to the Brand X case. If we had that, then we could theoretically have had competition even over a monopoly last mile infrastructure.
Sure, but that indicates a need for competition, not net neutrality. As I said in another comment, even if it prevents some of the worst abuses by incumbents, net neutrality regulation isn't going to create more competition.
> This analogy breaks down immediately, because Comcast is already getting Netflix traffic for free. There is no toll that needs to be subsidized, no charge that needs to be zero rated. Comcast is just blackmailing Netflix for protection money.
I don't think you understand the example. Mail carriers also get packages from Amazon for "free" in that sense. They don't pay Amazon for the right to deliver Amazon's mail.
It occurs to me that there is a difference in that the recipients of packages do not need to pay to receive them, whereas Internet users pay for access. There's no reason why mail services couldn't work that way in theory, though.
> You do realize that this effectively sets up Comcast as the gatekeeper to the Internet? Do you really want Comcast to be able to decide what's on your Interwebz?
If the market was sufficiently competitive, then Comcast wouldn't be the gatekeeper. If Comcast behaved badly, people would switch to a different provider.
Not every instance of possible bad behaviour needs to be regulated.
> That's even before we get into the fact that requiring to contract with Comcast before you can offer any online service is a barrier to entry and a competitive barrier.
We're talking about zero-rating, not "requiring to contract with Comcast before you can offer any online service". Those are completely different things.
> So that's your solution? Screw the small guys?
My solution is to increase competition, actually. My point is that we don't penalize big companies for being successful by taking away the benefits of being big, such as economies of scale. The "small guys" have to compete as well and shouldn't rely on the state to reduce consumer benefit in order to make it easier for them to increase their market share.
> Even if we start now, there won't be another option for years.
That's not necessarily true. For example, the FCC could do what Canada does and require ISPs to sell Internet access at fixed wholesale rates to resellers. Competition will spring up overnight.
There are many other approaches as well, such as blocking municipalities from entering into monopoly franchise agreements with ISPs, ensuring equal access to rights of way, and supporting municipal broadband.
True. I'm fine with not requiring NN in markets where there are at least four more equivalent or better options to chose from, one of which has to be following NN.
> As I said in another comment, even if it prevents some of the worst abuses by incumbents, net neutrality regulation isn't going to create more competition.
Again true, but that does not mean we should allow NN abuse in the absence of competition.
>> This analogy breaks down immediately, because Comcast is already getting Netflix traffic for free. There is no toll that needs to be subsidized, no charge that needs to be zero rated. Comcast is just blackmailing Netflix for protection money. > I don't think you understand the example. Mail carriers also get packages from Amazon for "free" in that sense. They don't pay Amazon for the right to deliver Amazon's mail.
I understand the example just fine, it's you that's got the wrong end of the stick.
Your first error is equating the mail carriers with Comcast. Comcast is not the mail carrier. The mail carriers are not the recipients of each piece of mail. Comcast, on the other hand, is the recipient of the bits.
A more apt analogy is that Comcast is the building owner with a mail room. The mail carrier drops off letters to the mail room, for free to Comcast. Comcast then distributes the letters to each tenant, who all pay Comcast for this letter delivery service.
Not a single building owner would get their mail delivered by the mail carriers, if they had a guard standing at the mail room door and if that guard demanded payment before letting anybody pass. In fact that would be a really quick way of ending up in court.
Your second error is thinking that the delivery of mail is the same as the delivery of bits. Each piece of mail requires incremental energy and manhours to deliver, whereas Comcast does not incur any marginal cost for taking delivery of and passing along the bits that their customers have requested.
>> You do realize that this effectively sets up Comcast as the gatekeeper to the Internet? Do you really want Comcast to be able to decide what's on your Interwebz? >If the market was sufficiently competitive, then Comcast wouldn't be the gatekeeper. If Comcast behaved badly, people would switch to a different provider.
Yes, that's how it works in theory. Too bad Comcast doesn't have any competition in most areas. What's your non-theoretical solution?
> Not every instance of possible bad behaviour needs to be regulated.
So, allow bad behavior until somebody comes along with billions of dollars and builds out a (hopefully) better behaved competitor?
>> That's even before we get into the fact that requiring to contract with Comcast before you can offer any online service is a barrier to entry and a competitive barrier. > We're talking about zero-rating, not "requiring to contract with Comcast before you can offer any online service". Those are completely different things.
Please explain how those are different things. How will I be able to stream HD cat videos to my users with Comcast without contracting with Comcast for zero rating?
>> So that's your solution? Screw the small guys? > My solution is to increase competition, actually. My point is that we don't penalize big companies for being successful by taking away the benefits of being big, such as economies of scale.
How is being able to afford to pay protection money an economy of scale?
> The "small guys" have to compete as well and shouldn't rely on the state to reduce consumer benefit in order to make it easier for them to increase their market share.
Wait, what?! How is consumer benefit reduced by abolishing NN? How is consumer benefit reduced by increased availability of online services?
>> Even if we start now, there won't be another option for years. > That's not necessarily true. For example, the FCC could do what Canada does and require ISPs to sell Internet access at fixed wholesale rates to resellers. Competition will spring up overnight.
You know, that's what we had with the Telecom Act of '96. The FCC decided we shouldn't have that after they lost the Brand X case.
Any other suggestions? Preferably some which can be practically implemented in a reasonably short time frame, such as years instead of decades.
> There are many other approaches as well, such as blocking municipalities from entering into monopoly franchise agreements with ISPs, ensuring equal access to rights of way, and supporting municipal broadband.
I'm all aboard with these suggestions, but even with all of these any improvement will take years, if not decades, and presupposes billions of capital and totally ignores the winner takes all of natural monopolies.
> If the market was sufficiently competitive, then Comcast wouldn't be the gatekeeper.
> My solution is to increase competition, actually.
> Competition will spring up overnight.
You keep saying this, but I don't think you understand:
1) That businesses like this do not spring up overnight, even in the figurative sense.
2) The incumbent ISPs lobby to reduce competition (often getting laws on the books to make it illegal for municipalities to offer internet access), and are largely very successful at it.
3) Rural areas basically get fucked, because there won't be enough money in new competition.
4) In the meantime, we have nothing to protect customers. Let's say you're right, and we can somehow increase competition. No, it's not going to happen overnight. What's going to protect customers in the meantime, after current net neutrality regulation is rolled back? Nothing. Removing regulation that has been obsoleted by other measures is fine and the right thing to do, but there's nothing to replace it right now that will have the same effect.
> For example, the FCC could do what Canada does and require ISPs to sell Internet access at fixed wholesale rates to resellers.
So why is this kind of "anti-free-market" regulation ok, while net neutrality rules aren't? (Also, we tried this. Most smaller players that took advantage of it failed because, while the Comcasts of the US were required to _provide_ access, there wasn't really a way to require that they provide it easily, or provide good service and reliability with it. And I believe this ended up getting repealed due to... you guessed it, lobbying efforts from the incumbents.)
I'm just really getting tired of all this "increase competition" rhetoric coming from people who seem to think they live in a fantasy world where it's easy, or even possible, to get these sorts of things done, especially in the current political climate.
Per your second point regarding the imminency of a free market, is that not also a regulation being imposed upon ISP's? You're proposing regulation on the physical infrastructure whilst NN argues for regulation (or non-regulation as it were) of data. What is the difference in your opinion?
Actually, it's access to the last mile that's sold a fixed rates. The ISPs lease aggregated links to the last mile network depending on how much capacity they need. These ISPs have their own internet uplinks. There are ISPs that are just pure resellers but I'm not sure if this is regulated.
But even this had a net neutrality issue. The ISPs leasing out the last mile access started to throttle certain traffic (bittorrent and VPNs) for their customers AND the customers of the ISPs that leased the last mile.
Recently the fight was over access to the new FTTH connections.
Soooo... you're in favor of net neutrality regulation, then.
ISPs should be dumb pipes, the end.
The international postal network is a bit more analogous. Let's say you order something from Widget Industrie in France. They pay La Poste to send it to your door in the US. La Poste transfers it to USPS, and pays USPS part of the postage to handle their end of it. Now imagine that USPS leaves your package on the warehouse floor for three weeks because Widget Industrie didn't sign up for their "expedited service" plan. Widget Industrie has never even talked to USPS, maybe doesn't even know that USPS exists.
Of course, international mail is regulated and has had "mail neutrality" since the 19th century, so you don't have to worry about that.
If some company wants to provide specialized data services so that Netflix can send data through their service to customers, that's fine with me. But that's not "the internet." These companies should decide whether they want to provide "internet access" or just specialized paid data access. Back to the mail analogy, FedEx and UPS have much more flexibility in terms of how they operate than USPS does, but as a consequence they don't get to participate in the international mail system.
And indeed, this already happens. Many ISPs provide phone and TV services separate from "internet" services. Nobody is complaining that Netflix can't get into your cable TV package, even though it's all just digital bits on the wire these days. But they don't call it "internet service." When they call a service that, there are certain expectations.
I agree that a lack of competition is the major problem here. If any given ISP customer had a dozen services to choose from, this would all go away. But that's a vastly more difficult problem. Saying we shouldn't worry about net neutrality because the real solution is competition is like saying we shouldn't worry about social security because the real problem is aging. Yes, if we solved aging we wouldn't need social security, but that's not a realistic approach.
Note: The views of the mentioned organizations do not necessarily reflect my own views.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Basics
[1] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/08/01/wikipedia-zero-and-net...
The big ones back-haul to a major hub and then enter in to several peering agreements. Depending on what service/site you use the "best" path will be over one of those peers.
However, this means that there is usually a middle-man-network in between you and the service you want and neither you, your ISP, nor the service can directly control the quality or speed of that network. If Netflix, Hulu and Google all end up with a "best" path on a single peer its going to be bad during prime time even though other services connected on other peers may operate normally.
One version of a "fast lane" (like the one that Comcast and Netflix negotiated) is to remove that middle man and directly peer with the service. This is only available to large services because they need a presence in these major hubs as it usually requires a direct physical connection between edge routers.
Now, no matter how congested their peers get, the "fast lane" service is working well. They have probably also agreed not to charge the actual "market" rate on that link's bandwidth as it is mutually beneficial and the ISP should pass those savings to its users by not counting the service against any data caps etc.
From the outside, this looks like extortion. The reality though is that both sides pursue these kinds of deals all the time because it benefits their customers and therefore their bottom-lines. ISPs push harder for them because services, like Netflix, are incentivized to find the lowest cost transport peer which is usually not the highest quality. When that peering link is bad, customers blame the ISPs not Netflix.
Netflix used to brag about how cheap and cut-rate their cost per gigabyte was. How do you think they got such a good deal? It wasn't by purchasing the best connection to their customers. It was become some sales exec at a tier 1/2 internet transport provider oversold their poor service. We should be just as upset with the overselling of transport over peers as we are about ISPs throttling but, most of the internet citizens don't understand how that works.
Another note, most of the times when people use VPNs to "prove" that their ISP is throttling network capacity for a service, they are simply routing over a different peer (the one that connects to their VPN). In ideal circumstances this is traveling over a sub-optimal path and should suffer a little bit. However, in times of heavy congestion it is like being routed around a traffic jam. It is "very hard" with current routing protocols on the backbone to do this kind of "flow around" for congested paths in real-time for everyone. Single users are manually implementing it by hitting VPNs.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Free_Zone
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20130704133456/http://www.google....
But the offering of Wikipedia Zero clashes with the idea of net neutrality.
The common counter argument seems to be that "Regulation is bad for the open market" and that "Better options would come up if an ISP starts doing weird shit, if the market demands it".
It's interesting to me that the very same people seem to be pro Freedom of Press/Freedom of Speech (as a German, the US Freedom of Speech is something I'm not used to, something that doesn't align with my culture/upbringing), but feel different about this subject because it involves a "market"?
Definitely the bar to become ISP is too high, lower it and the problem will be gone. I don't belive that people don't want to become ISP just like that - something is wrong here.
On the other hand I have to say that sane regulations make sense, for instance mobile operators in Poland who own hardware infrastructure are obliged by law to sell bandwith to virtual operators when requested. That indeed lowered prices and provided better serivces including mobile internet. However, to have a full picture, I need to say that at the down of mobile telephony in Poland, initial investment and infrastructure was build by companies owned or controlled by the state, so, to some extent, infrastructure was payed from public money and later sold to 100% private entities.
The real reason we have few ISPs is that building facilities require large amounts of capital, returns are low and the incumbents have already built out the profitable markets.
Regulation is not the root of the problem. Sure, lessening the burden would help, but not solve the problem.
Documented abuses of net neutrality were few and far between and there really wasn't a precedent for the 2010 Act in the first place. Mobile phone carriers are not subject to the same net neutrality rules, yet I haven't heard of any of the 4 major providers deliberately throttling internet service.
That's Libertarianism. Everything done by government is bad, everything done by businesses is good. Looking at the actual effects is verboten.
But it's kinda weird to see you use 'verboten' - probably to make this sound "really bad",in some sort of authoritarian way - in a reply to a post that contains the words "as a German". That seems inappropriate.
* health care pre-payment with no residual value plan
1) ISPs agree not to compete; and
2) It is expensive for new entrants to build infrastructure.
It would be ideal to solve NN with free market.
But the ISPs have monopolies that prevent competition.
Making net neutrality necessary today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incumbent_local_exchange_carri...
2) It is expensive for new entrants to build infrastructure. --> Yes, but if the ROI is sufficient, it can still get done.
3) Local / state government "franchise" agreements which grant incumbents monopoly (or near monopoly) status. --> the real killer. If the local government regulates you out of the market, it's game over.
Except they currently do this, so... yes.
> 2) It is expensive for new entrants to build infrastructure. --> Yes, but if the ROI is sufficient, it can still get done.
> 3) Local / state government "franchise" agreements which grant incumbents monopoly (or near monopoly) status. --> the real killer. If the local government regulates you out of the market, it's game over.
It's not in the public's interest to allow a bunch of random companies to dig up our roadsides to lay a ton of fiber, over and over and over. So I don't see this changing.
That is a correlation expressed as a causation.
The federal government could foreseeably take back some of that infrastructure by building it itself. The last mile is the most expensive part, so why not build a fiber backbone to every public school, and then let the municipal government's decide if/when/how they cover the last mile implementation?
First off, no: we don't allow any random company to dig up our roadsides to lay cable, and that's a good thing.
But let's say we did. So you want to attract competition by showing the newcomers that they can make more money than in the net-neutrality era by engaging in anti-customer behavior? How is _that_ good? Or are you expecting more competitors to come in out of the goodness of their hearts and "settle" for building a current-style (quite lucrative) ISP business without that behavior, making less money?
However that breaks down once you consider the fact that it's not practical at all. Not to mention that providers would have no reason to offer such cheap offerings, either.
Sure they might. Large companies with deep pockets subsidize the premise to their own benefit (whatever that happens to be). In your example, let's say instead it's $3 per month for just Facebook services (FB, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc). Comcast partners with Facebook on the effort, in which Facebook pays a few dollars per month to subsidize the user plan.
Facebook currently derives something close to $9 per month from US & Canadian members. They hit 45.6% net income margins last quarter, which is extraordinary. They're set to become the greatest pound for pound profit machine in world history, they can afford to use some of that margin to further lock in their monopoly by purchasing preferential access treatment in numerous ways.
Online services (Google, Facebook, ...) make just a few bucks per user. This is peanuts compared to what broadband costs. The fixed costs alone are tens of dollars per month.
"Called Free Basics, it provided only limited access to the Internet through a suite of websites and services that, unsurprisingly, included Facebook"
https://www.cnet.com/news/why-india-doesnt-want-free-basics/
Instead, ISPs want to leverage their almost-exclusive control of Internet access to unfairly crush competition.
Users can choose not the use Facebook. Many users cannot choose not to use Comcast, because Comcast is the only ISP in the area.
Lack of competition among ISPs make them different from web companies.
By definition you're devaluing the infrastructure. This is saying, infrastructure does not deserve to make money, only ads deserve to make money.
I'd rather ISPs not compete in web services and instead make money providing the pipes as it's an important job in its own right.
Your logic leads to bad incentives for ISPs, leading to long-term degradation in a important industry. Letting ISPs make more money will introduce more incentives to compete with them too. Why did Google Fiber fail? At least partially because there's no incentive for Google to fully invest in a 10% profit margin service while it's ad business has 60% profit margin.
End net neutrality, let ISPs charge internet companies fees, and we'll suddenly have ton more money in the industry, competition in the market and we'll see an end this era of shitty internet.
First of all, Google Fiber's strategy was not to make money but to push the industry to start installing new fiber-speed infrastructure, and it was successful (see the new ATT Fiber, etc.). Google did this because consuming it's services (like youtube) instead of watching TV are tied to having access to low-cost fast internet.
You're also not understanding that communications infrastructure is a natural monopoly. Infrastructure costs are the barrier to entry, meaning that even if ISPs make more revenue, they're still not going to have competition. ISPs are no more likely to invest in infrastructure without net neutrality than they are now, making your argument pointless.
Comcast etc. are already making money hand over fist. Removing net neutrality regulation will only allow them to engage in anti-consumer behavior in order to line their pockets further.
In general I wouldn't be opposed to that, except that we live in a world where you can't just decide to be an ISP. It's not in the public's interest to allow just any company to dig up the roadside everywhere to lay cable, and radio spectrum is a precious, scarce resource.
So that's the deal: we give them the privilege of being a monopoly, in exchange for legal mandates that they won't engage in certain types of anti-consumer behavior.
The “infrastructure industry” huh? The internet, of course, should be treated as a utility.
So it's not less ads, just that some of the profit from the ads would go towards the base infrastructure, which is a good thing.
ISPs are a natural monopoly and therefore must be carefully and thoroughly regulated, just like any other utility. Their job ought to be to provide a regulated standard of service at a regulated price, no more & no less -- just like your water and electric utilities.
Are all these comments fake/propaganda? I wouldn’t be surprised!
Edit .. see this top story now on the homepage here about the New York states attorney investigating iNternet fakery https://medium.com/@AGSchneiderman/an-open-letter-to-the-fcc...
I still do not see why there isnt the same uproar as there was previously that stopped SOPA. What's different this time?
In the IC, operations against the US match the above as well. Everyone loves to rail on Russia, but they are peanuts compared to the collusion that is AIPAC... Now you didn't say the Russians, so correct me if I am misinterpreting.
My point is that operation mockingbird just changed names after the Church committee. WaPo is part of it, as are numerous others. Our own deep state (in the Peter Dale Scott sense of the term) is the most active in deception and manipulation of the American people, and it's high time they realized it.
I could go further, but it delves into "conspiracy theory" territory that most people don't like to hear.
The arguments against net neutrality are related to that; instead of limiting how much people use to keep the pipes open and fast enough so to speak, it's giving certain services preferential treatment, so that in the case of limited bandwidth those aren't disrupted.
Of course, it's a silly thing; most landlines, especially in the cities, will have fiber connections at least up until a local distributor box, and in some cases to the door. This has many gigabits of capacity, which should be enough for everyone.
The thing is that apparently, investments in bandwidth aren't being done enough. Google gave it a good try with their fiber service, but had to give up - probably underestimating how expensive it is, or they were blocked by the existing ISPs that didn't tolerate competition.
TL;DR, I think the problem isn't available bandwidth or whatever, it's competition, or the lack thereof, and investments, or the lack thereof.
Google gave up partly thanks to ALEC lobbying and laws, probably lobbied for via the incumbent regional ISPs.
Also since you're curious, Pai recently gave his views: http://reason.com/blog/2017/11/21/ajit-pai-net-neutrality-po...
Ajit Pai's FCC is against net neutrality as a result.
The fact that Pai was Verizon's top lawyer doesn't help, either.
Oh, forgot about the big money players who want to exploit it for their own purposes and thus portray anything which interferes with it as end of the world; namely google and similar service providers. throw in big money investors like Soros and the Knight group and you can see this is being played just like politics, people putting their money where the biggest return is. The biggest return is having super large companies free reign to use the net how they want regardless how it impacts smaller providers and smaller ISPs.
Which side was I on? Can you tell? That is the issue. People are assuming too much.
oh, since 2014 broad band deployment has dropped. odd how that works.
Then there is a second lot who use peering agreements and CDNs.
Almost nobody is against a free internet. A lot of people such as myself are against the FCC being in charge of regulating it. Competition and the FTC's anti-trust authority have kept the internet free for decades and will continue to do so in the future.
The people pushing "net neutrality" want to transfer power to the FCC because the FCC will go beyond maintaining fair access to the internet. They'll next move into regulating content as they have done with television and radio. That's the real goal.
Net Neutrality is a mandate that ISPs cannot prioritize data from one website over another. It's a regulation to ensure that Comcast cannot effectively censor websites it doesn't like by hiding it behind a slow lane of sorts. We know that ISPs have attempted to throttle Netflix's content, which is what prompted the recent regulatory changes in 2015.
What evidence do you have that net neutrality will necessarily lead to government censorship of the Internet?
Why is net neutrality an essential component for the government to censor content?
Personally I am ambivalent about net neutrality. I, however, am deeply opposed to the existence of Title II, let alone it being used to regulate the internet. If advocates want net neutrality to be the governing policy of the internet why don't they advocate for specific legislation that does only that and doesn't give the FCC the ability to become a heavy handed regulator of ISPs?
Do you have evidence that they are not advocating for proper legislation, or are you just saying this to baselessly discredit advocates of net neutrality?
If I recall correctly, the invocation of Title II was a reaction to an unfavorable supreme court case. Perhaps this is not the most ideal solution, but if one believes that net neutrality is important to protect, it appears to be the only solution in the absence of such legislation from a do-nothing Congress.
Also, if you believe that the FCC is historically corrupt and regressive, why do you seem to trust the FCC to make the correct decision right now? Do you have evidence that corruption in the FCC has vanished?
Let's not jump the gun here, I clearly stated that I do not know the intentions of advocates. I haven't heard of any legislation in congress, but that doesn't mean there isn't any.
I don't trust the FCC, Aijit Pai is actively calling for removing power from the FCC. I trust this specific act of the current FCC chair, I don't trust the FCC.
Or put another way, for about 90%+ of the Web-Internet combo's active existence in the US consumer market, net neutrality has not been law.
They don't compete with each other.
Without net neutrality, they can prioritize, slow down, or block any site or content they want to.
Many people cannot simply switch away.
They have only one ISP to choose from.
You can switch away from Facebook whenever you wish.
Those prior decades were the infancy of the internet. When children go 16 years without wrecking a car, it doesn’t mean they are perfect drivers.
So it's not a case of "It only came into law 3 years ago!" but rather "We put it back into law after being considered law for 30 years because of a court case that demanded clarification".
https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-formally-rules-comcasts-thrott...
That's effectively what lead to the situation we are in now. FCC said it's illegal, appeal ruled FCC doesn't have the authority to regulate at the time, FCC makes attempts at making "net neutrality" a thing they can control, and now we are on the verge of having them roll it back.
Basically, ISPs starting pushing the boundaries and a war directly against the concept of net neutrality and that fight is the one we are currently talking about right now, this is just the latest battle.
The way I see it, and probably why Google et al don't seem to be throwing up a recent fuss anymore, is that the big tech companies and industry giants can cut deals with the major ISP's to avoid throttling or provide services/expertise to the ISP's. So the end result is turning Google et al into their OWN monopolies. (e.g. Comcast partners with Youtube to deliver streaming video!)
Now you get telecom monopolies AND service/content monopolies.
Truly the best of both worlds.
We had cars before seat belt laws why do we all of sudden need it?
We had cars before airbags why do we all of sudden need it?
We've has guns before gun control so why do we all of sudden need it?
Edit: People have been giving birth for a long time without doctors so why do we all of sudden need it?
The only two that even remotely relevant are seatbelt laws and gun laws, the other two are not even laws.
For seat belt laws, there was evidence that such laws increased pedestrian injury rates and severity. Whos to say that outweighs the benefits of forcing a few people to wear seat belts that are already in their cars?
For gun control, to say this in american context is weird. The US barely has gun control so to say it like its absolutely needed is odd.
Net Neutrality will just make it even harder for new players to compete because they will have large regulations to meet. The only way to improve is to make it easier at a local level for more companies to compete.