By freedom, I assume you are a big supporter of the "Restoring Internet Freedom Order" and can't wait until you can choose to add the YouTube or Netflix packages to your internet connection for $20/mo each.
I paid for a CD once, a long time ago. I still had to pay for electricity for the stereo. And that damn greedy electric company chose to charge me more for listening to it when I wanted to. Sure, I could have played my music from midnight to 6am, to take advantage of my evil utility's lower rates at night, but I chose to listen during the day.
That utility was really evil, too. I wanted to install an electrically powered utility in my old house. It was a dryer. But they made me go out and find some third party to "prepare my electrical network" for the product I had already purchased. I had to find an electrician to come and install a 240V circuit in my house. I already pay for electricity, but they couldn't even be arsed to come fix my wiring for me.
Don't get me wrong. I love net neutrality. But I don't think my preferences should be enforced upon the entire population. I also hate fishing. I don't care for tripe. But I also don't try to enforce that preference on others.
My mother barely uses the internet at her home, but she pays the same price I do. I am a very high bandwidth user. I definitely free-ride on the average user who consumes less bandwidth. It's not fair. I should pay more. But I don't.
Irrelevant, you already pay Netflix and your ISP.
A better analogy would be: I paid for a stereo, but now I have to pay for listening to it because it's a Sony, whereas I wouldn't if it was a Philips.
My mother barely uses the internet at her home, but she pays the same price I do. I am a very high bandwidth user. I definitely free-ride on the average user who consumes less bandwidth. It's not fair. I should pay more. But I don't.
Also irrelevant, Net Neutrality doesn't in any way prevent ISPs from charging for the bandwidth you consume. If they don't, it's their decision. It only prevents them from charging more depending on where the bits go.
What did I pay my ISP for?
I can pay for cable television. I can pay extra for HBO, or not. I can only get NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV. Where is the outrage?
Why is the coax that comes into my house and hooked up to my cable box less deserving of outrage than the coax that comes into my house and connects to my modem?
Exactly! You pay for HBO, like you already pay for Netflix. You don't pay a surcharge to be allowed to pay for HBO.
I cannot purchase cable HBO without paying for basic cable. I have to pay my cable provider a premium for the privilege of paying them for HBO. I could, of course make a contract directly with HBO and stream, though that is theNetflix scenario.
I have a dumb wire coming into my house. Depending on the deal I make with my cable provider, I can have different content available by using that wire.
My internet is a dumb wire coming into my house. I can make a deal with my ISP to have certain things possible on that wire. I have a customer record. They block certain ports. E.g. I cannot run an email server using my connection. If I purchase a business package, they will update my customer record to indicate such and I get a static IP and can now send email. They are allowed to do this.
Both of the above are about dealing with a single entity. So all of these prices are bundled into one payment to one entity.
I can purchase or lease content. One way to do this is Netflix. Another would be to purchase media, e.g. a Blu-ray disc. They are mere providers of content. If I want to consume the content I need to purchase a compatible platform. If I lease content from Netflix I need basically any computer and an internet connection. If I purchase a Blu-ray, I need to buy a player of some sort.
When I purchase my Blu-ray player, there are license fees baked in there to various patent-holders for the privilege of decoding that disc. It's all bundled up into one price, though, for fees and hardware. The purchase of a Blu-ray player is a completely different transaction with a completely different entity than the creator of the disc. The hardware manufacturer is under no obligation to sell me a player, but they do. They are also under no obligation to make their hardware support multiple formats. Despite this it was very easy to find a VHS-DVD player for a while there. I don't think anyone offers Blu-ray and laserdisc.
When I lease my internet connection, that is a different transaction with my ISP, a different entity than the content provider (Netflix). The ISP is under no obligation to offer me a contract to serve all content equally to me, though that has been a common contract for a long time.
Among the actors A, B, and C, there is no obligation on C when A and B make an agreement. There is no obligation and should be none on my ISP when I make a deal with Netflix. Similarly there is no obligation between Netflix and me when I make a deal with the ISP. And similarly with the purchased content and the hardware manufacturer.
If my ISP (who, as a matter of fact IS my cable provider) charges me like my cable provider, that does not seem terribly unreasonable from a business relationship perspective.
All that said, another element of argumentation is that different content providers may subsidize their content. This is, of course, already the case. Netflix gives ISPs streaming boxes for free to optimize delivery of content. A subsidy doesn't have to give cash. I'm sure Google has similar boxes for Youtube content.
Now, what of the nightmare scenario? This is where one content provider pays an ISP to not host anyone else's content. Netflix pays Comcast to not support Youtube. This is different than Netflix paying Comcast on behalf of its customers (it already does in the form of its streaming boxes, which reduce load on Comcast's network - that is very much a direct subsidy). Netflix shouldering a cost on behalf of its customers is just a transfer, we would pay for that in the Netflix subscription (and we do! We pay Netflix. Netflix sends boxes to ISP for "free"? No we pay for those streaming boxes which by definition are a subsidy to Comcast). That's fine. Netflix paying Comcast to block a competitor's content? That's different. And if we need to deal with it, we can. Anticompetitive behavior is already something that we have legislation in place to prevent. And we can use that infrastructure in the case that one actor in the market is distorting it. As we did when Intel made exclusive deals with OEMs to block AMD out of deals. As we did when Microsoft bundled IE for free. As has happened in many other cases.
Now, all that said, I like net neutrality. Actually, I freaking love it. I want it very badly. It is a good thing for me. I benefit from it. But me wanting something is an insufficient threshold for me to support it as a policy. I would love to pay no taxes for instance. I would be better off if most people were not allowed to drive (so long as I get to be one of the lucky few). I would be better off if a lot of things happened, and vanishingly few of those things are good policy. Now, before the strawman cometh, my argument is this:
"I want" or "I receive a specific benefit" is a poor justification on its own for a policy. Similarly "Two of us want" or "two of us receive a specific benefit" is a bad justification. This holds for very large N (certainly more than half of the population - see the case of 51% enslaving 49%).
I am not saying that net neutrality is the same as me paying no taxes, or the other items I mentioned.
My argument is this:
Agreements between party A and party B should not be expected to impose arbitrary obligations on party C. Net neutrality says exactly that: "Because I paid Netflix for a service, Comcast is required to enter into a contract with me to deliver that network traffic to my home"
I would be mighty miffed if Comcast forbade me from watching Netflix. Still doesn't mean that I have the right to impose that obligation upon them.
So you can make an hypothetical argument using a spherical ISP that doesn't follow net neutrality and also doesn't own a content distribution service, but in practice the two can't be separated.
Again, noncompetitive behavior is covered under existing legislation. But "no extra for Netflix because I like Netflix" is not an argument that carries weight. Charging extra for something that incurs cost is not anticompetitive. Comcast can distribute its own content for much cheaper if everything stays on its backbones and doesn't require peering with other networks. Why the hell shouldn't they be allowed to offer their product for cheaper?
Why are existing laws and regulations protecting competition insufficient? Especially in light of FCC rulings that punish anticompetitive behavior even in the absence of formal net neutrality laws.
The opposite of such a freedom is not that one party chooses to charge for some of its services, but that one party is prevented from offering such a service.
You mean a thing that has literally never happened anywhere in the US?
> The things Americans will frame as freedom of choice will continue to baffle me I guess.
I understand that you are frustrated with what is happening with this new legislation but it doesn't help you to make up smug fantasies about America just to make yourself feel better. Your energy would be better spent on your own knitting and maybe this kind of thing wouldn't happen.
This specifically may not have happened, but these things certainly did:
Is Netflix "prevented" or "not preferred". Let's pick our battle before we fight it.
But there is some useful grounding here. I use the term consenting adults, but perhaps we should refer to "legal entities". I think it is fair to start from a place where legal entities are allowed to enter into agreements with one another.
You are a legal entity. I am a legal entity. Netflix is a legal entity. Google is a legal entity. EI is a legal entity. (I have given the hypothetical ISP in your post a name, Evil ISP.)
There's my starting point. Would you like to continue a discussion about this? Please feel free to let me know if you disagree with anything above, and we can start there.
>Is Netflix "prevented" or "not preferred". Let's pick our battle before we fight it.
See, in my mind these two are, legalese aside, absolutely identical for the consumer. Legalese included I absolutely realize they are the same, why wouldn't they? It's just contracts between legal entities.
From the view of a society with states that govern and can, where it benefits or would otherwise hurt society, restrict what entities can put in their contracts I'd say that there are plenty of cases to be made for such restrictions (e.g. worker protections, access to elementary resources, ...).
I'm kind of hoping here that we have some common ground there. I feel like our point of disagreement is whether or not governments should be involved in the case of ISPs, right? My point there would be that if one legal entity (consumer) does not have a wide range of choice (ISP), there hardly is any choice to be had and one party can pretty much dictate the terms of their agreement (and a bunch of other arguments for net neutrality others formulated way better). This might really boil down to the question if we personally attribute some societal value to ISPs being a neutral player or pure infrastructure provider I'm afraid.
edit: formatting
So, I have a couple priors.
One of these priors is that it is, in general, a good thing to place as few restrictions on actors in society as possible. Not anarchy. Not mindlessly. Just as a general rule of thumb. Something that doesn't need justification on its own, but rather needs a case to be made to go against.
Another of these is that, in general, laws and regulations have costs. Enforcement carries cost. Also, we forego the things that are regulated against - rarely are these things pure evil. Sure, there are exceptions. Genocide is pure evil (though there is much room for compassion for those coerced into participating). This gets us down a rabbit hole quickly.
So, in general entities should be able to make deals. And adding to legislation that exists is costly (as in "bears cost").
The situation you describe sounds a lot like a monopoly. The nightmare scenario presented in net neutrality is typically "Netflix is blocked because Google paid more to let Youtube through". I think this is categorically different than "Netflix is now more expensive than Youtube is". Especially because the latter sentence is already true. We can disagree here.
The case is one of actual blocking. E.g. Google makes some exclusive deal with Comcast, where Comcast does not allow traffic from other streaming video suppliers. This is clearly anticompetitive, and we already have regulation to address it. Comcast and Google would both be blatantly in violation of anti-trust regulations and could be prosecuted. We don't need net neutrality to prevent this. Indeed, there are cases of wholesale blocking of this sort in the past that were dealt with by the FCC without formal net neutrality legislation in place. E.g. Vonage got blocked by an ISP that offered landlines; ISP got smacked.
So as I see it, we're left with the case of differential pricing.
So it seems to me that net neutrality addresses two primary concerns: true anticompetitive behavior and differential pricing.
In the case where services are priced differentially, but all are available, I honestly see very little difference to cable TV. And there seems no inherent reason that all traffic should carry the same price, as it is not the case that all traffic costs the same to an ISP.
So what might cause differential pricing? Sure, Google could pay Comcast to discount its services, but that's just a transfer. If Google pays Comcast to make it easier to get to us, well we're making that up to Google somehow. They're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. Either we're paying with data and ad impressions, or it's baked into the subscription price.
If Google enters a contract with Comcast which has Comcast charge extra for Netflix traffic for no other reason than Netflix competes with Youtube, then we're back in an anticompetitive scenario and don't need net neutrality.
But it is reasonable that different traffic costs differently. If Comcast is offering its own streaming service, they can serve that entirely on their own network - no need to use any peering agreements or pay for bandwidth beyond their own infrastructure. If Youtube or Netflix comes from outside of Comcast's network (not always the case - Netflix subsidizes its traffic by offering streaming appliances to ISPs), then that traffic IS more expensive than Comcast's own content. This seems entirely reasonable to price differentially.
Ultimately, I would like net neutrality, and would personally benefit from it. Or rather, I would personally have my current state prevented from being negatively impacted, since net neutrality is largely the status quo. I do not fail to see this. But it is an argument that doesn't hold water with me (I am not saying this is your argument, simply that it is a common one).
So, I think we may be at a bit of an ideological impasse. If I interpret your response correctly, one of your priors is roughly "if we see an area where we think we can improve things through legislation/regulation, we should". My priors lead me to look askance at new regulation/legislation. I don't see why we need net neutrality, only why we might want it. For me, "need" is the threshold for legislation, not "want".
Let me know if I'm off on what I suggested as the two primary issues addressed, or if you have questions on where I'm coming from, or if I seem to be off on interpreting your stance.