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Killing Net Neutrality Could Be Good For You
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Berin Szoka and Brent Skorup write that everyone assumes that cable companies have all the market power, and so of course a bigger cable company means disaster. But content owners may be the real heavyweights here: It was Netflix that withheld high-quality streaming from Time Warner Cable customers last year, not vice versa and it was ESPN that first proposed to subsidize its mobile viewers' data usage last year. 'We need to move away from the fear-mongering and exaggerations about threats to the Internet as well as simplistic assumptions about how Internet traffic moves. The real problems online are far more complex and less scary. And it's not about net neutrality, but about net capacity.' The debate is really about who pays for — and who profits from — the increasingly elaborate infrastructure required to make the Internet do something it was never designed to do in the first place: stream high-speed video. 'While many were quick to assume that broadband providers were throttling Netflix traffic, the explanation could be far simpler: The company simply lacked the capacity to handle the "Super HD" video quality it began offering last year.' A two-sided market means broadband providers would have an incentive to help because they would receive revenue from two major sources: content providers (through sponsorship or ads), and consumers (through subscription fees). 'Unfortunately, this kind of market innovation is viewed as controversial or even harmful to consumers by some policy and Internet advocates. But these concerns are premature, unfounded, and arise mostly from status quo bias: Carriers and providers haven't priced like this before, so of course change will create some kind of harm,' conclude Szoka and Skorup. 'Bottom line: The FCC should stop trying to ban prioritization outright and focus only on actual abuses of market power.'"
bullshit!
"A two-sided market means broadband providers would have an incentive to help because they would receive revenue from two major sources: content providers (through sponsorship or ads), and consumers (through subscription fees)."
Thus it would be a disincentive to carry any data where they could not do any double billing for the bandwidth revenue. Is Berin Szoka an industry shill?
everyone assumes that cable companies have all the market power, and so of course a bigger cable company means disaster. But content owners may be the real heavyweights here
So big content providers (the "real heavyweights") can lean on ISPs to exclude access to small content providers (or at least to get better access than small content providers). That's what network neautrality is intended to stop.
When ISPs where Mom and Pops shops doing things for the neighborhood, they got some special protection and the FCC kept their hands off.
Now ISPs are huge companies and SHOULD be considered common carriers. If they start inspecting packets to see where they come from, to assign priority, they will lose the shield of common carrier. They will be expected to know more about the contents of the packets that get sent. So that Bin Laden or kiddie pron video will be on THEIR network. Do you want them to know more about the contents of what you put on the web?
Things like polluted air and water, sugary drinks, strychnine, high crime rate, police state, etc. could also be good for you. Except that they are not.
The internet is a dumb system of pipes with the intelligence at the edges, specifically so we can do things with it that non-techies don't think we can do.
Streaming video is easier than downloading large programs, as you only need to ship a certain amount per second, rather than ship it all and only be able to use it when the last byte has arrived. For real-time broadcast, which causes massive numbers of synchronized transfers, you can use multicast directely, as well as to "prime" a content delivery network node close to your particular edge.
davecb@spamcop.net
That is where the real danger lies: stacks: the joint ownership of or collusion between content providers and transport providers. If the interests of a specific content provider overlaps with those of a specific transport provider, there is an opportunity to screw the customers and competing content providers. Net neutrality aims to prevent such practices, and rightly so. You don't want to be locked out of DuckDuckGo (or even Bing) because Google have paid off your ISP.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
In the early 2000s, the federal government gave tax breaks to the then-leading communications giants to install an open high-speed data infrastructure throughout the country. The amount of taxes they didn't collect averaged $2,000 per household. Shortly after that, the companies began sales and mergers. TechDirt.com published an article detailing this scam as recently as 2013.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
Caution, this is a rant:
People want to be able to download as much as they want from anywhere they want for a flat rate. This is childish.
I believe completely in net neutrality. The ISPs are in fact common carriers and should be treated as such.
However net neutrality does not come cheap. People have to pay for what they use in bandwidth the same way they pay for what they use for electricity, water and fuel. Someone who uses 10GB a month should pay ten times as much as someone who uses 1GB a month and they should be able to use 100GB if they can afford it.
This is not a social issue. A poor child doing their homework doesn't need a gigantic feed. It's for people who have nothing better to do than watch netflix and play games.
sorry, but I feel better now...
He's not talking about a "two-sided market", he's talking about an industry that is trying to double bill. The end user pays for the delivery infrastructure, and if they need to build more capacity, it should come out of the huge profits these companies are realizing. *That's* how Economics 101 works. Saying "I'd really hate something bad to happen to your bits on the way to your customer...maybe you should pay me a little something to make sure that doesn't happen" and then claiming "I need the money because bandwidth" is simply extortion. Utter bullshit, every word of it.
The argument that the poor carriers are being bombarded by all this data (when our endpoint bandwidth is much less than other places in the world) is completely absurd. It's not because the internet wasn't "designed" for video, it's because competition hasn't spurred more development by the carriers. They've been living on capital rents.
This piece is naive in the extreme: it assumes implicitly that the only players are major content providers, carriers, and "consumers", and never speakers, telecoms, and citizens.
That is where the real danger lies: stacks: the joint ownership of or collusion between content providers and transport providers.
Agreed. It's also not a new problem. Back in the 1940's there was a problem with movie studios owning theater chains, which of course only showed, or at least gave preference to, that studio's movies. Of course back then antitrust law was actually enforced (United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.), which allowed for real competition. Nowadays corporate rent seeking is called the free market. While we're at it, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.
This isn't news--this is an opinion piece, and it's a bad opinion piece at that. The bulk of it is not only wrong but eye-wateringly wrong and factually incorrect.
Whether or not ESPN wanted to monetize their viewers or not has nothing to do with Net Neutrality or a lack thereof. ESPN is an over-the-top provider in this case just like dozens or other companies. This argument is just thrown in to confuse people and pretend that there is precedent for the argument the morons are trying to make.
That quote deserves special contempt because it's not only bullshit but is also a shamefully ignorant statement to make. Not only was the Internet designed to route traffic without passing judgement, IPv6 (the protocol broadband would be moving to if they weren't so busy punting around) handles all sorts of data in special ways to facilitate these sorts of things. Furthermore, multicast, bitches. It was designed for doing things like streaming video something like twenty years ago.
As to this stuff about a "two-sided market"... it's simply a load of nonsense. Broadband providers don't need a special incentive to "help". What they need is actual competition so they'll stop goofing off, actually invest in upgrades like any healthy technology company should, and stop paying people to write shillery like this. The fact that they're already being paid by their customers at rates higher than almost everywhere else in the world, for notably slower connections should be a big red flag that they're negligent in this obligation.
We're not "assuming" broadband providers are throttling Netflix--we can prove it, because unlike paid shills, we can actually analyze and diagnose networking issues. Fifteen minutes of Googling will readily turn up multiple reports (from both skilled individuals and capable technical organiztions) demonstrating that the broadband ISPs are throttling the traffic.
If you want abuses of power, this article is one. It's nothing but a pack of lies designed to muddy the waters. Are we going to start seeing reposts of the stupid shit FOX News says now?
"No, you shouldn't worry about prioritization, in fact it can help startups."
What? Wasn't that what everyone was worried about to begin with? That those with all the purse strings would be able to lock out these very startups you're claiming will benefit the most from this setup?
Their comments fly in the face of logic and basic economics.
Once the ISPs can double-dip, charging twice for the same bandwidth, there will exist a tremendous disincentive to carrying any traffic they can't double-dip on. Worst case scenario, "startups" without enormous financial backing will simply be stuck on the Internet slow-lane.
"Help startups"? My ass!
Who did what now?