A favorite pet theory of mine: "That government is best which governs least."
Is it really so bad for the government to be more hands off?
Discuss. (Preferably people more informed than I am will share their insights.)
Except that's not what this vote is about. The government currently says that ISP's must treat internet traffic equally. This is a good thing and is hardly micromanaging. Without it, an ISP is able to kill their competition and extort other companies.
Examples: In 2005 the FCC ordered an ISP to stop blocking VOIP calls on their network. The ISP had their own phone service, so they started to block VOIP services on their network in order to force customers to use their phone product. Without NN, this is okay.
In 2005 the AT&T CEO claimed that "Anybody who expects to use our pipes for free is nuts!". ISP's want to demand a cut from every website just to reach their customers. Without NN, this is okay.
In 2012 AT&T decides to block FaceTime on its mobile networks for subscribers unless they enter into a “Mobile Share” plan. Without NN, this is okay.
There are more examples available, these all came from http://whatisnetneutrality.org/timeline.
The internet should really be nothing more than a dumb pipe. Your ISP should be doing nothing more than connecting you to the internet. They should not have a say in what websites you go toor what services you can use. They should not be able to force websites to pay for access to their customer base. The ISP should provide you X Mbps for Y GB of bandwidth and that's it.
First of all, this vote is factually about giving the government less regulatory power by reclassifying ISPs under Title 1. The legal basis for Net Neutrality under Title II allows the government to dictate prices and essentially regulate ISPs like they do water or electric utilities. Obviously ISPs would prefer to not have this axe swinging over their heads.
> The government currently says that ISP's must treat internet traffic equally. This is a good thing and is hardly micromanaging.
It's a matter of opinion whether this is a good thing. One counter-argument is that it limits the size of the menu that ISPs can offer. My parents, for example, want fast home Internet access but do not watch streaming video. However home ISPs cannot offer downgraded video, so my parents must pay more.
Zero-rated ("free streaming") music - blatantly non-NN - is another argument. Obviously people like streaming music for free. NN proponents think this makes it hard for startups to compete with deep-pocketed established players. But this does not seem to be happening: lots and lots of services, both big and small, are now zero-rated on popular plans.
> The internet should really be nothing more than a dumb pipe.
Well, maybe it shouldn't. Applications have different needs: twitch games want low latency, streaming services want high bandwidth, overnight downloads can have low priority, etc. If you had a knob that controlled your Internet latency, wouldn't you use it?
But even if you believe it should be dumb, is it proper to declare that ISPs are natural monopolies and therefore ought to be regulated aggressively under Title II? Or is it better to apply a light touch and find ways to encourage competition, under the premise that competitive markets are more consumer-friendly? The recent upheavals in the mobile telecom market (led by T-Mobile) show that established players can be more vulnerable than they look.
I think basically we don't know. The most compelling arguments for NN are all hypothetical, because we have been living under a NN regime so far.
Generally, people would prefer that they have this control, not that the ISP has this control for them and does what the ISP wants.
Your single ISP available to you could decide that you don't get to access your favorite site(s) without charging an additional fee to access them. They could refuse to offer any unknown sites, and just offer facebook, youtube, etc, each costing some number of dollars to use.
Net neutrality prevents this.
1. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/50-mi...
A company has to lay so much fiber or wire to service even a reasonable number of households that the barrier to entry is huge.
Further, "governing least" is a terrible idea, because that also implies that they're going to fail to govern in situations where they should.