Cato Institute: The Case Against Net Neutrality | Hacker News Reader

Cato Institute: The Case Against Net Neutrality

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58 pointszacharyvoase81 comments

The FCC is way out of its league on this one. Basically, it is a creature of statute. It can do whatever Congress has authorized it to and no more. Nothing in its authorizing statute expressly permits it to impose the rules now known as net neutrality. Therefore, it sought to justify its ability to do so under the doctrine of so-called "ancillary jurisdiction," meaning that it had an implied power to do so in aid of its expressly granted powers. Unfortunately, a definitive federal appeals court ruling held that no such ancillary jurisdiction existed, leaving the matter for Congress to decide. Rather than deferring to Congress, the FCC chose to adopt a new rationale for its assertion of this authority. Congress overwhelmingly balked at the idea of any broad assertion of such authority and, in the back and forth, the FCC came up with the toe-in-the water approach just adopted to the satisfaction of almost no one. Even this assertion of jurisdiction will certainly be challenged in the courts in cases that will take years to decide, leaving this whole issue in a pathetic state of uncertainty for all concerned. Nothing good will come of this except for lots of employment for the lawyers who will be litigating whether this or that action is "reasonable" and whether the internet is really like a public utility or not. All in all, a royal mess.

This article, and the comments on this thread, attempt to address the principled issues relating to net neutrality both pro and con. The sad reality is that, at the moment, principle has little to do with any of what has been implemented and only lawyers and lobbyists will be driving this process for the near future.

    No firm or industry has any sort of “bottleneck control” over or market power in the broadband marketplace; it is very much a competitive free-for-all

Uh, last I checked, I had one viable, reasonably priced internet provider (local cable company) - all the others are either much slower (DSL) or much more expensive for equivalent service (ptp wireless).

Seriously, I'd be willing to give up "network neutrality" in a heartbeat for a free market system, provided that I get plenty of viable, competitive choices for the last mile to my house, which I think would solve additional problems rather than just the one being discussed...

So then are you willing to give it up in the wireless space? Because there appears to be plenty of competition there.

Sure, as long as the competition is:

1. An equal playing field - ie, no one carrier has a technical or legislative advantage over any others.

2. Carrier lock-in is eliminated - any device allowed on any network, no long term contracts.

3. There are little to no barriers for new carriers to enter the market.

This would increase competition, in the favor of wireless customers.

1) Technical advantages are welcomed, just not legislative. 2) Arguing from the perspective of the Cato institute, who are you to place restrictions on the phones carriers sell? The root issue is whether providers have a monopoly or not. But keeping a distinguishing feature just as phones to yourself is just good business. 3) Completely agreed.

This paper (circa 2004) was written from the perspective that internet service is not a monopoly. In this situation the answer is clear; (to a libertarian) government has no business dictating how we should do business.

A large debate within libertarian circles is what to do when monopolies happen. The reflexive answer is no government interference allowed no matter what, the market will figure it out. Obviously in certain situations that doesn't work too well, as far as I know it's still an open question.

Would you count patent protections as technical or legislative? Patents are supposed to be used only to encourage technological progress, but all too often they screw up the competitive landscape on an entire market in ways that are obviously unfair. If we could reform our patent system to get rid of software patents and raise the bar for physical inventions, then it might be okay to say that technical advantages [protected by patents] are fair.

This is sort of a divisive issue for Libertarians. On the one hand, patents extend the reach of Capitalism into new places, which some libertarians who are reflexively pro-Capitalism like. On the other hand, patents are government restrictions on what you can do with your property, so more consistent (imho) Libertarians tend to be against them.

I would personally list patent protections as legislative. There was an article posted to HN recently about patents and what I took away was that they do little to protect someone who isn't a large corporation. I believe this is related to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2034262 , patents (in any form not just software but also physical) are just another way to prevent a free market from forming. And libertarianism is based on a firm belief in the free market.

IMO, the presence of (3) from that list will go a long, LONG way in eliminating (1) and (2).

Given an easy way for competitors to enter the market, carrier lock-in wrt devices and features will decrease dramatically. Citation: See the UK and (to an extent) Indian telecom markets.

Wow. The idea that profit-motivated corporations would voluntarily do what you describe is an idealistic fantasy. That's why some regulation is needed.

Exactly - everywhere there's a natural monopoly, it should be regulated into being a common carrier, when possible.

This allows innovation to flourish on top of a commodity service - fundamentally, the only thing that this kind of provider offers is the last mile, just like the water or electric company.

Can you give examples of natural monopolies?

The only ones I can think of government granted (including US broadband, because of the local city/muni exclusive contracts purchased).

See here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

Personally, I think their definition is a bit broad - I tend to think of natural monopolies are where the universe's physical limitations cause obvious problems either physical or practical for competition.

For example, in a totally libertarian society where you would pay a toll to drive on any road, you wouldn't want hundreds of companies trying to making their own roads between points A and B - it wouldn't be an efficient use of space, and just imagine that turnpike.

Still, someone needs to manage the road to your house, power/cable/telephone/etc. thus the government manages the companies that manage that service.

The reason that these monopolies are "natural" is that there's a physical limitation involved - it just also happens to be codified with a contractual agreement.

Regulatory capture.

Not really. As far as the bandwidth, latency and reliability required for a decent desktop connection the current competition is none at all. I had a friend that had one of those services where you use wireless internet for the house, she did nothing but complain.

Of course there are things in the future, there is 4g and all of that, it is yet to be seen whether 4G will be doable if everyone in your building is using 4g at full speeds.

I was actually expecting a net-neut. sucks because we need a freer market - this paper is just ridiculous. Sounds more like the Federalist Society to me...

I agree though that a better market is preferable to NN and the current system. The issue here is how to solve the network effects / physical monopoly problems that plague the industry.

On the one hand, no one is going to run a fully parallel system - even the incumbents didn't. They bought it from companies who bought it from companies that went bankrupt in the process of doing it.

This means we'd need to either nationalize the existing system or put it into some type of co-op with the internet users as the voting group (via the gov't) - or less drastically we could mandate a certain bulk rate discount (w/ indexing to some of the known variables) so that new players could instantly begin competing without needing to overcome the massive infrastructure issues.

...or we could just do net neutrality which is a good stop gap - which is what it seems is the current pragmatic solution. Let's hope a better market-based system can eventually replace the monopolies, but until now it seems like NN is the way to go.

What kind of benefits would we expect a magical solution to the inefficiency of the broadband market to provide as compared to what a comprehensive net neutrality law would provide? Or, to put it another way, if we get a good net neutrality law passed, what techniques are left for the cable/dsl duopoly screw us with? We already have laws against price fixing, so if those are enforced in addition to net neutrality, most consumers would get pretty close to the quality of service they would get out of a properly competitive market. I would be wary of the government trying to indirectly prevent the shady practices net neutrality would outlaw --- it could too easily end up providing screwed up incentives the way agricultural subsidies do.

I think this is a question that isn't discussed enough.

So you've formed the question as: "how can they screw us through X more", and that's certainly part 1 of the question, there's also the second part of "how can this reduce innovation - and screw us in the long term".

I approach this from the incentive alignment that drives politics. I assume that both big biz and gov't are in

Part 1: Corporations influencing the law

Laws are written by/for lobbyists on each side. Making a new law will inherently draw out the lobbys of each side (certainly has here). If corporations are allowed to play with the laws regulating them - you can imagine that they'll try to gain as much power as possible. Think about the banking regs and how the banks just raised the fees on other things instead - same problem.

Part 2: Law Slowing Innovation

Even if NN didn't have the influence issues, it'd still be regulating the way the internet is today - not how it might be. Just as we've seen in banking, when you put restrictions on the bad guys, you also hurt the good guys. Look at what happened to Prosper.com, etc. when they tried something innovation in banking. Look at how there are no progressive banks - only progressive services using the banking system. I'd like to avoid this issue at well so the internet so can further refined.

By regulating the source of the issue, the natural monopoly of the fiber network itself, can we allow innovative firms to get in the market quickly and have incentives to innovate - or at the very least encourage the big guys to keep up.

> Sounds more like the Federalist Society to me...

Bingo.

I think you've lost perspective. You have chosen the product that best suit your needs from a variety of different products. You have your opinions about what "reasonably priced" means, but don't mistake that as meaning that a "reasonable price" actually exists. There are different levels of quality for all products. You don't see people calling for legislation to regulate Google search because its competition isn't as good.

Most people don't mind slower/cheaper DSL service, so long as they can access email and Facebook. As far as I can tell, the free market has worked really well up to this point. Here in Saint Paul, MN, I have a wide variety of options to choose from: Comcast, Qwest DSL, dial-up service, AT&T 3G wireless, Verizon/Clear/Sprint 4G wireless, satellite internet, etc. I do business with Comcast because they offer the fastest connection I can get and at a price that I consider "reasonable."

> You have chosen the product that best suit your needs from a variety of different products.

But there's no competition within the product categories themselves. Say there's only one breadmaker allowed to make bread in your city. The fact that you can still buy potatoes or pasta doesn't mean that you're dealing with a free market.

The way I see it, the product category we are dealing with here is "internet access."

FYI, the paper was written in 2004.

This is a very poor article that does nothing to provide any insight into network neutrality. That's not too surprising, though, since it's 7 years old.

If the knee-jerk fans of benevolent government want to criticize their position, it would at least be appropriate to criticize their current position, such as found in this recent paper:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-626.pdf

So, it looks like they now admit that neutrality is a good thing, but they say not to worry, because it's impractical for ISPs to actually discriminate. The documented cases of anti-p2p traffic shaping, large-scale deep packet inspection, and the eagerness of ISPs to secure their rights to do those things without even telling consumers all prove that the Cato Institute's analysis has not yet converged with reality.

...and the eagerness of the government to 'regulate' wikileaks out of existence proves that the statist's analysis will never converge with reality. Look, if ISP wants to fuck with packets, then all you have to do is encrypt them, on onion route them, or whatever. If you are being regulated by the government, though, you just might get a friendly knock on the door. Or maybe the government will raid you with a swat team. Hope you don't have any pet dogs.

(This is from 2004, so please add a (2004) tag to the end of the title nobody else misses that.)

I think Net Neutrality is profoundly a US issue. Unlike in the US, in Europe one usually has his choice of 4-5 ISPs and several good mobile bandwidth providers (plus, there is no such thing as tethering). While in the vast US suburbs there is usually just one ISP, providing tiny bandwidth and terrible service.

In the US, bandwidth is much more scarce and therefore either ISPs, content providers and individual customers are more urged to economize it. Consumers want to do it through Net Neutrality out of a fear of being stuck on a "slow lane" and ISPs want to gain the maximum value possible from their assets.

Perhaps an environment more friendly to new ISPs (less rules, more tax breaks etc) could solve this problem. Of course, established companies (semi-local monopolies) have political power. The push should be rather toward breaking this political power.

Over the long term, even without Net Neutrality, having a fast growing infrastructure will prevent the sort of abuse customers are currently being threatened with. With Net Neutrality, but still with a quasi-monopoly, I don't think people would necessarily get a better service.

FYI, the Cato Institute is a well known libertarian think tank. I upvoted this because like to hear both sides of an issue.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Cato_Institute

Since we're playing that game, sourcewatch is published by prwatch. Some of their funders are listed at: http://www.prwatch.org/finances.html

What makes you think that those folks are on the up-and-up?

Ad hominem doesn't just go one way....

Uh, the publicly-edited, well-sourced, and very thorough Sourcewatch wiki article isn't even in the same galaxy as "ad hominem".

Personally, I think it makes Cato look good. I don't always agree with Cato or what they do, but they are at the very least consistent in their principles and don't misrepresent the fact that they explicitly represent corporate interests, both things that are incredibly unusual among D.C. think tanks.

> Uh, the publicly-edited, well-sourced, and very thorough Sourcewatch wiki article isn't even in the same galaxy as "ad hominem".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

An ad hominem (Latin: "to the man"), also known as argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to link the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.

The suggestion was that something from cato was bad because its supporters were bad, which is ad hominem. The accuracy of the list doesn't change that.

FYI, the Cato Institute was founded partly by Charles Koch, and you can research that yourself if you want.

ad hominem

I think funders are generally fair game to consider when looking at someone expressing an opinion that directly impacts the funders. There are good reasons that conflict-of-interest rules exist for folks like judges and even schoolteachers. We don't have legislatively-mandated conflict-of-interest rules for pundits and think-tanks, but imo it's still fair for individuals to consider whether conflicts of interest might exist.

> I think funders are generally fair game to consider when looking at someone expressing an opinion that directly impacts the funders.

You mean like folks pushing the net neutrality proposal?

You're kidding, right?

The article, when read carefully, seems quite disingenuous, because given the way the points are carefully phrased to sound sensible while actually being wrong, it is hard to believe that the author actually believes the argument themselves.

Going through it point by point:

* Their first argument against is that it is hard to define network discrimination. But it really isn't, and I can define it in one sentence: routing network packets differently depending on anything other than header information specifically designed for routers to process (IP headers in the case of Internet Protocol), or routing outgoing traffic based on destination addresses with the intention of deliberately slowing traffic to some destinations but not others.

* 2 - to paraphrase "Internet access is not a right, so we shouldn't protect it". The reality is that so much human communication, including participation in democratic processes and a huge part of the economy happens online, and so it is reasonable to consider it a human right. The fact that it is relatively new doesn't change that.

* 3 - To paraphrase "Network discrimination can be good, because it lets operators:

Stop immoral practices like spamming or 'hacking'" (presumably they mean cracking). That some people might do bad things not a good reason to censor the Internet. Favouring downloads over uploads for technical reasons - that is not really within the scope of network neutrality.

Conserve bandwidth - they give examples about usage caps, which are content neutral so outside of the scope of network neutrality. Specifically trying to slow certain applications, relative to another, is not necessary to limit bandwidth usage in a neutral way.

Promote brands - this is exactly why network neutrality is needed - network operators shouldn't be able to exploit their market position as gatekeeper to the Internet to favour one company over another.

Preventing 'theft' of service - except that if I pay for bandwidth, it is not theft to use it however I like, including allowing others to use it. Another good argument for network neutrality, not against.

Implementing a variety of network access charges to help to recover costs - ISPs can make money charging users for bandwidth in a non-discriminatory fashion, so there is no need for them to exploit their market position to charge people who aren't even connected to the network as well - and stopping them from doing that is a legitimate aim of network neutrality.

* 4 - to paraphrase "consumers might want more than a dumb pipe from their ISP, and if they go too far, the market will take care of it"; ISPs can offer services which are optional to consumers - that isn't a network neutrality issue, it only is when they become compulsory (e.g. you must use our nameservers) that it is. No consumer wants to be forced - at best they will tolerate it or it will make no difference.

* 5 - to paraphrase, "the market will sort it out". The market can't sort it out, because there are high barriers to entry, it is a finite market, and so the market is not infinitely efficient (and in some areas approaches a monopoly), and in practice there is little room for consumer choice influencing Internet markets except with regards to price, advertising, and to some extent reliability. While consumers benefit from network neutrality, very few are in a position to take this into account when choosing services.

* 6 - To paraphrase "ISPs should be free to put whatever they want in their contracts". The reality is that 'freedom of contract' is not fair when there is a huge difference in bargaining power, the markets can't sort it out for the reasons discussed above, and government intervention is appropriate.

* 7 - To paraphrase, "Network operators own their equipment and should be able to do what they like with it". That is like saying gun owners should be able to do what they like with their gun, even shoot people. It is reasonable to put in place laws against certain types of unreasonable exploitation of a market position, and property rights don't extend to using the property to break those reasonable laws. The argument here seems particularly disingenuous.

* 8 - To paraphrase, "network neutrality will discourage innovation and investment". The reality is that network operators can still profit from charging users for access - and that is enough to encourage investment. The main limit on ISPs profits is likely to be competition, and all ISPs are subject to the same laws - so no service that was profitable without network neutrality is likely to become unprofitable because of network neutrality.

* 9 - to paraphrase "introducing laws around the Internet will encourage players with a special interest to try to game the system". There is an obvious and simple solution to this one - transparency and openness in decision making. Gaming works both ways - gaming to not introduce network neutrality because it is in corporate interests anyway.

* 10 - to paraphrase - "putting in place Network Neutrality laws will start down a slippery slope towards government control of the network". Nothing specific to any network neutrality law makes it easier to change laws around the Internet later, so the argument is wrong. Unjustified corporate and government interference in network neutrality are equally big issues, and network neutrality fixes one of the problems and makes no difference to the other one.

All in all, none of their arguments stack up.

Do you think Comcast should be prohibited from offering asymmetric broadband connections?

Suppose Comcast offered the following packages:

- 6 megabits down, 2 megabits up for $50/month

- 10 megabits down, 4 megabits up for $80/month

- 10 megabigs down, 4 megabits up, 20 megabits to youtube.com for $35/month

You're telling me that package 3 reduces consumer welfare and threatens the internet?

Suppose another package were added:

- 2 megabits down, 2 megabits up, all requests matching bing.com?q= redirect to google.com?q= ... price FREE.

How is consumer welfare being harmed? Any consumer who would choose this package values free internet more than the "right" to use Bing.

Or, suppose there is a mainstream movie about bittorent and suddenly Comcast decides to offer the following:

20 megabits down, 20 megabits up, no torrent traffic: $30/month. (with bittorrent it costs $80/month)

I'd argue that protocols have evolved to exploit network neutrality. Why should your ISP pay for Skype's supernode? Why should bandwidth hogging protocol users hog all the bandwidth?

Residential bandwidth sales are speculative, since the ISP doesn't have 20 megabits for every customer who is paying for it. The system works b/c people don't max out their connection and rarely use peak bandwidth at exactly the same time.

I think under this usage pattern, it's reasonable for prohibitions to exist. I also think that there should be higher tier bandwidth (like if you buy your own OC3) where you are buying all the bandwidth whether you use it or not. For such services non-neutrality makes no sense whatsoever.

The problem isn't so much that Comcast et al. want to offer packages 3, 4, and 5, it's that they want to discontinue packages 1 and 2 and replace them with crippled packages at the same price, with premium charges for YouTube, etc.

"Why should bandwidth hogging protocol users hog all the bandwidth?" Why don't ISPs simply charge by the megabyte, so that by the time they have too many bandwidth hogs on their network, they're bringing in enough money to afford network upgrades? "Bandwidth" isn't some fixed resource. If there's demand for more, the suppliers can provide more by either laying extra cables or upgrading the equipment at the ends of their fibers, and this kind of reaction can happen on the timescale of months, which makes it pretty fluid given that consumers also pay by the month.

True, but it's more a case of a small number of users resulting in tremendous loss of profits.

Suppose you open a restaurant and offer free bread and some customers come in and buy the cheapest item on the menu and eat $10 worth of bread. It's just not sustainable.

Which is why no restaurant claims to offer unlimited free bread.

There is no "but". If it were actually true that a small number of users consume so much bandwidth that it causes "tremendous loss of profits", then ISPs should drop the "unlimited bandwidth" claim.

But they want to keep that because it's just so nice for marketing.

What they really want is to claim "unlimited bandwidth" without actually offering it.

In my comment, I said that asymmetric connections are not a network neutrality issue - by which I mean that proposed network neutrality laws don't / shouldn't cover them, so the article is bringing up a strawman issue.

Options 4 and 5 are network neutrality issues. If they are allowed, it is likely that they could be more cost effective for ISPs, and become the only options. Competition doesn't work for things like this, because most consumers don't understand the benefits of network neutrality.

However, deviations from network neutrality are bad for everyone in the long run, because it means that ISPs become gatekeepers, and slow innovation on the Internet.

If I were to use Skype, I would pay my ISP for traffic between my computer and Skype's supernode, and the owner of the Skype supernode pays their ISP for the traffic as well. The only time traffic isn't paid for is generally when it gets to the tier 1 networks, who don't charge each other because the exchange of traffic is mutually beneficial.

Given a fixed level of network hardware, bandwidth is a scarce resource, and economics provides a very good way to manage scarce resources - charge for them. This is exactly what happens at present. There is no need for any kind of ISP control over what sites are accessed or what protocols are used - and if too many people are using the bandwidth, ISPs can simply put up the price.

ISPs undoubtedly oversell bandwidth - but that is not an insurmountable problem for ISPs if there are network neutrality laws - they can either oversell bandwidth by less, or just stop overselling.

As one of the other comments pointed out, ISPs could just charge for bandwidth.

The current (speculative) pricing schemes and hypothetical non-neutral pricing schemes are simply alternatives to pricing per megabyte.

Why? Because ISPs believe that their product appears to have moe value when it's sold as x megabits per second for y dollars rather than x megabytes for y dollars.

Since most customers can't estimate how many megabytes they use each month, it makes little sense to price the product that way. Whereas many customers know that if they currently have 10 Megabits, if they upgraded to 20 megabits their downloads would be faster.

Comcast's boost pricing is evidence of the way ISPs are evolving to meet consumer demands. They give you lots of bandwidth for just long enough to let you download a song or a movie, but don't constantly make it available to you. This creates the perception of faster speeds for most customers.

The problem is that Comcast wants to sell "20 megabits down, 20 megabits up, no torrent traffic" but market it as "20 megabits down, 20 megabits up". Which is actually a problem that doesn't require complete network neutrality to solve, but might benefit from government intervention.

Agreed that is a problem, but if you have noticed most of them have dropped the "unlimited!" from their slogans. I recall when my local cable provider was called Optimum Online Unlimited!. What they meant was that it was unlimited time, always on. Explictedly not unlimited bandwidth. I know this becuase I was cut off about 3 times in 6 months for using too much bandwidth. When you used to have to pay per minute, having an always on internet connection was "unlimited". Now everyone just assumes they pay 1 price per month for having access to the internet for the entire month. Would it make any sense to build the infrastructure so that every customer can saturate 20 megabits down every minute of every day of the month? Of course not. So they can't provide the model of always connected and unlimited bandwidth. It's one or the other.

I have an option of different speeds through my provider, and I'm OK with paying extra for the higher speed. Internet connection is more important to me than what channels I get on TV (which begs the question why I pay more for TV than internet). My parents would rather have more channels and slower internet. I don't see anything wrong with that.

For such services non-neutrality makes no sense whatsoever.

Basically the whole point of purchasing internet access is that you can use the sites and services you choose, just as the whole point of purchasing telephone service is that you can call the people you choose and receive calls from others.

Thus I have a hard time seeing how non-neutrality makes much sense on any sort of plan. If a customer is using the service to excess, charge the customer for use -- that's perfectly sensible. But saying "this customers used the service to excess, therefore we will disable part of the service for all customers" is nonsensical.

I think the key point is that customers are very different and that currently "broadband" is sold as a single type of product.

The person who downloads a few songs and videos and checks email wants a very different product from the person who is constantly uploading torrents.

Net neutrality is mostly just FUD though b/c with the exception of protocols that specifically exploit "shared bandwidth" pricing, it's unlikely to impact anyone (since consumers do like choice). Even my google/bing example is quite farfetched, b/c it's not likely worth enough to Google to subsidize bandwidth just to get search clicks, and in any case Comcast could sell Google analytics data without having to restrict anyone's choices.

I don't agree with the Cato article either, but this just sounds hopelessly naive:

"There is an obvious and simple solution to [players with a special interest to try to game the system] - transparency and openness in decision making."

Couldn't your argument be applied anytime someone objected to the unnecessary intrusion of government regulation? "Oh, we'll just have the government make decisions in an transparent and open way. Problem solved."

Better yet, let's have politics decide all economic questions. Then there'll be no gaming of anything.

Isn't there enough evidence that this is the status quo?

sadly

Why is that so hard?

Because "the government" is an abstraction. In reality the decisions have to be made by specific people with specific interests and biases.

People with regulatory decision-making power are, by definition, powerful. So they have the interests of powerful people, which are unlikely to match the interests of most of the rest of us.

More importantly, government is an organization.

The foremost motive for an organization (like any organiam) is self-preservation. Transparency is usually perceived as a vulnerability that might allow enemies to attack.

And when enemies == constituents, it might be time to fold the whole thing up and start over.

to paraphrase "Internet access is not a right, so we shouldn't protect it". The reality is that so much human communication, including participation in democratic processes and a huge part of the economy happens online, and so it is reasonable to consider it a human right. The fact that it is relatively new doesn't change that.

On the one hand internet access and participation in digital communities is almost a modern form of free assembly. It's important for just the same reasons that free assembly is --- and threatening to power structures for the same reasons too.

The problem is that there are no "public spaces" in which to do this assembly --- all of the spaces on the internet are privately controlled. But this "modern free assembly" that's emerged is tremendously important, and we need to find some way to guarantee it.

6 - To paraphrase "ISPs should be free to put whatever they want in their contracts". The reality is that 'freedom of contract' is not fair when there is a huge difference in bargaining power, the markets can't sort it out for the reasons discussed above, and government intervention is appropriate.

Even if there actually is a huge difference in bargaining power, it does not follow that government intervention is appropriate. Existence of some sort of "unfairness" in the market does not mean (1) that restricting people from entering such contracts is moral and (2) that government intervention will result in a better outcome.

7 - To paraphrase, "Network operators own their equipment and should be able to do what they like with it". That is like saying gun owners should be able to do what they like with their gun, even shoot people. [...]

Not it is not. Shooting (innocent) people infringes on their rights. "Exploiting a market position", even if one believes it to be a reasonable issue, does not. The analogy does not apply at all.

The point here is that network operators to not have the obligation to use their own property to provide services to anyone, in the first place. There's nothing wrong if they decide to start offering those services for a ridiculously high price -- it's much better than no service at all. And there's nothing wrong if they also decide to offer bandwidth discounts to certain web sites.

> Favouring downloads over uploads for technical reasons - that is not really within the scope of network neutrality.

Why not? It blatantly discriminates against uploading services to the direct cash benefit of downloading services.

And that is the heart of the argument against network "neutrality": discrimination laws are always and everywhere a full-employment act for lawyers and bureaucrats. And AT&T will buy those lawyers and bureaucrats and use them to shut down competition.

> The market can't sort it out, because there are high barriers to entry, it is a finite market, and so the market is not infinitely efficient (and in some areas approaches a monopoly), and in practice there is little room for consumer choice influencing Internet markets except with regards to price, advertising, and to some extent reliability.

What market? The Internet industry is still in the wildcat stage, with most of the physical plant becoming obsolete and being discarded on a ~15 year schedule. They are trying to rigidly control a market that we all hope will be burned to the ground in ten years because the technology just isn't good enough.

> The reality is that 'freedom of contract' is not fair when there is a huge difference in bargaining power, the markets can't sort it out for the reasons discussed above, and government intervention is appropriate.

Indeed, which is why the government needs to keep competitive markets open and let them sort out the winners and losers. At this point, nobody knows what services are useful or valuable, so mandating some sort of ideological bandwidth management is pointless.

For example, Amazon might start renting space for a mini hard drive cluster in the telco neighborhood boxes, so that we get TV on demand from speedy local data farms. As surely as the sun rises in the east, Akamai would promptly get a restraining order preventing such a barbaric infringement of network "neutrality".

Of course their arguments don't stack up. They're professional conservatives. They are paid very well to systematically lie and distort for very specific purposes.

They are libertarians, not conservative.

Uh, actually, they espouse GOP positions for money. They state that they are libertarians, yes, we know that. That doesn't mean that they don't support a lot of the exact same things that the GOP establishment does.

Not anymore.

Plain HTML version:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-507es.html

Just a little information on the source from http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Cato_Institute

- The Institute states that it favors policies "that are consistent with the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, and peace."

In 2006 Cato raised approximately $612,000 from the following 26 corporate supporters:

Altria (the report identifies Altria Corporate Services as the contributor)

American Petroleum Institute

Amerisure Companies

Amgen

Chicago Mercantile Exchange

Comcast Corporation

Consumer Electronic Association

Ebay Inc

ExxonMobil

FedEx Corporation

Freedom Communications

General Motors

Honda North America

Korea International Trade Association

Microsoft

National Association of Software and Service Companies

Pepco Holdings Inc.

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company

TimeWarner

Toyota Motor Corporation

UST Inc

Verisign

Verizon Communications

Visa USA Inc

Volkswagen of America

Wal-Mart Stores

> In 2006 Cato raised approximately $612,000 from the following 26 corporate supporters:

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute "According to its annual report, the Cato Institute had fiscal year 2008 income of $24 million."

In short, the "list of funders" is both ad hominem AND misleading.

You could also look at any big non-profit/think tank and find a similar list of corporate donations.

Huh?

I'm pretty sure ad hominem doesn't mean what you think it means.

And I'm quite certain that his listing of funders could be easily verified. So unless you have information to the contrary, I'd characterize that list as "fact based" vs "misleading".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

An ad hominem (Latin: "to the man"), also known as argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to link the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.

The accuracy of the list doesn't stop it from being ad hominem.

The misleading part is suggesting that $612k of donations is decisive in a budget of over $24M.

Uh, isn't quoting the wiki page on "ad hominem" ONCE in a thread enough? Why do it twice? And do you just run around posting "ad hominem" 100 times a day and downvoting opinions you disagree with?

You need to get it straight. If you say something nasty about Cato and I attack YOU personally, that's ad hominem. If you say something about Cato and I attack Cato or some of its supporters and explain why, that's not ad hominem, and no matter how many times you post a wikipedia page, that doesn't change.

> If you say something about Cato and I attack Cato or some of its supporters and explain why, that's not ad hominem

It depends on the explanation, specifically whether the attack goes to the substance of their position or, as in this case, "they're bad companies", which makes it ad hominem.

> And do you just run around posting "ad hominem" 100 times a day and downvoting opinions you disagree with?

It's easy enough to see that I haven't. I also haven't killed any puppies this week.

Any other questions?

I understood that; but the fact that these are the type of entities that supported this enterprise is telling enough.

> I understood that;

You understood that you were making an ad hominem argument that was misleading?

> but the fact that these are the type of entities that supported this enterprise is telling enough.

I note that you didn't bother to tell us who supported the other side....

Wouldn't that also be "telling enough"?

So, where do I verify sourcewatch's creditability and neutrality?

>> Comcast Corporation

Comcast is or soon will be, the owner of the left-wing station MSNBC. Does that mean that we can safely disregard everything said on there?

And libertarians are NOT pro-business, they are pro-LIBERTY. In a world where so many Hollywood movies feature a corporation (not HW studios, though) as the source of all evil, and the Dems bash businesses while receiving most of the 2008 Wall Street campaign money, they only seem pro-business.

Libertarians aren't YOUR definition that conveniently makes your point for you, they're MY definition which conveniently makes my point for me!

I'm coming in so late, that few will see this. Which is good for an irrelevant question, I guess.

I wonder a bit about Cato Institute.

As people have noted, this 2004 report is too old to build an opinion from. The arguments were less sophisticated then. It is hard to have an opinion.

From the Wikipedia page, Cato is one of the more influential think tanks in the US. The US political life is a strange animal to me, so some basic information would be nice re Cato?

(-: Mainly since I was flamed and called troll by a couple of left wingers for referencing a Cato report :-).

So... How much "work for hire" does Cato do? Or the average US think tank? Can you trust anything from a US think tank?

Appendix: The report I was flamed for: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9626

(Afaik there are not even attempts to answer this slaughter of 'The Shock Doctrine", which seemed to be why the "arguments" got personal. But, certainly, credible references as to why you can ignore arguments form top think tanks would be interesting?)

> How much "work for hire" does Cato do? Or the average US think tank? Can you trust anything from a US think tank?

What makes you think that think tanks are different in this respect? Heck - what makes you think that think tanks are only on one side of this issue?

> But, certainly, credible references as to why you can ignore arguments form top think tanks would be interesting?

Yes, if you've got any.

Hint - "they got paid" isn't one. Very few people work for free, and their record is pretty bad.

A "think tank" is just one mechanism for funding folks making arguments. There are many others.

I'm not arguing a point, I'm just checking if some idealists might have been correct in disqualifying an argument, just because it came from someone affiliated with Cato.

From the lack of good answers, I infer they just couldn't answer the argument -- and lacked the integrity to admit that. Not exactly surprising, for people with fixed political world views.

(Being called "troll" by a favorite author hurt. :-)

You know, this is totally ad hominem but Cato is a free market think tank. They couldn't come up with an article in support of net neutrality if they wanted. It is completely against the free markets holy scripture they have vowed to protect. Likewise, the Economist is similarly tainted with the defense of the free markets in its charter.

Which isn't to say free markets are wrong or bad. I'm just saying they lose some credibility when they tell you the answer before you've told them the problem. I kind of feel like I'm just being trolled whenever someone posts something by Cato or Heritage.

That said, freedom to contract treads a fine line across all aspects of our lives. And that line is continually being adjusted by the government to fit the needs of the times which hopefully they understand or at least address properly by dumb luck.

Because of the importance of the internet and the inherent monopoly of network providers, net neutrality may be wise to implement so problems do not arise as Cato so optimistically asserts they do not exist now and will not exist in the future.

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