Slashdot Mirror
Reason: How To Break the Internet (in a Bad Way)
Widespread public sentiment favors the FCC's move to impose rules intended to establish "net neutrality"; an anonymous reader writes with a skeptical viewpoint: "No decent person," write Geoffrey Manne and Ben Sperry in a special issue of Reason, "should be *for* net neutrality." Across the board, the authors write, letting the FCC dictate ISP business practices will result in everything they say they're trying to avoid. For instance, one of the best ways to route around a big firm's brand recognition is to buy special treatment in the form of promotions, product placement and the like (payola, after all, is how rock and roll circumvented major label contempt for the genre). That will almost certainly be forbidden under the FCC's version of neutrality.
I don't want ANYONE buying promotions into my IP stream! I want my ISP to do their freaking job and shift packets from the source to me, without molestation and without interest or undue visibility into the contents.
Sadly, this is impossible. The problem is that there isn't one big pool of "internet" and a bunch of ISPs out there finding ways to sell it to you. Instead, a massive and intricate network of peering agreements exist just to make the internet function at the basic level, and THEN they figure out how to get it to your house. So, it's impossible for the FCC to say "hey verizon treat netflix with the same respect you would any other peer" because peering agreements work both ways, cost both companies money, and either verizon OR netflix can abuse the relationship.
1) net neutrality is pushed by a coalition of commies and rent-seeking aristocrats, so you should be against it
2) no one in government understands the Internet, so whatever they do will be wrong
3) even if you are a commie, you should know that the market always responds to what the consumers want in spite of corporations attempts at anti-competive practices, so we can trust the ISPs to always do what is best for us
I am indecent, profane, and absolutely obscene... and goddamn proud of it! You can take your goddamn corporate authoritah and shove it up your ass sideways with razorblades then be made to clean up the ensuing blood pool off the floor with your tongue you goddamn corporate bastard!
*Please note that this is not a personal attack against Adriax and nor is the intended sarcasm completely lost on me... nor is the irony of posting this goddamn disclaimer... but this is seriously what these corporate/PC bastards that think this way need to be told.
The problem (as you recognize) is that the administration is trying to go about this unilaterally. Obama is still acting like it's 2009 with his "I won" mentality. But what one President can order, the next can change.
Instead, the executive branch and the legislative branch should agree on what the law should be and make it so; unfortunately there has been no effort to reach any kind of compromise.
That's an interesting re-intreptation.
On the other hand, I could just as easily say that one private company paid a bunch of money to another private company (after already having paid yet another company a bunch of money to send the same data), and users final got the service that they already paid a bunch of money to that second company to receive.
Because, you know, that's what actually happened.
My sig can beat up your sig.
This is one of the areas Reason (and quite a few libertarians to boot) have shot themselves in the foot.
They don't cite specific instances of where Title II will bring about the doomsday scenarios they paint, and instead engage in FUD over any regulation (which, contrary to popular claim, libertarians should be for as long as they are sensible and fair and needed).
Instead of railing against the corporate welfare telecos have gotten or that they have gotten immunity for illegal wiretapping, they planted their flag here, which apparently works for this illiterate brand of libertarianism, and have completely omitted the question that brought this about in the first place: customers not receiving their advertized bandwith.
I mean, they open with a quote from Hayek. Except Hayek was also a proponent of basic income and land value taxes.
Imagine Reason discussing that other aspect of libertarian thought.
Not bloody likely.
I went to Sperry's twitter page.
The amount of Libertarian derp is stunning.
Didn't bother with the other author.
Title II is in effect because the ISPs decided to not play nice with their customers. If everyone liked Comcast, for example, instead of calling it the absolute worst company in customer service, we would never be here.
The days of the mom-and-pop ISP with direct personal service and "organic growth" of the Internet has been over for more than a decade. And what has taken their places are large customer-fucking entities with abysmal customer service and that absolutely refuse to upgrade infrastructure but instead put caps on use to deal with the demand. And for that they demand ever higher payment. This is after we threw billions at them to install last-mile fiber that they never installed, but instead handed out to the shareholders.
In the People's Libertarian Paradise of Concord, NH, we have exactly *two* "broadband" providers, both of which suck massively, one of which doesn't even offer broadband as currently defined (=>25Mbps). Comcast and Fairpoint (unfairpoint, fairly bad point, etc)
That's why we are here. This is "why we can't have nice things."
Screw both of these guys and Reason magazine too. If not outright corporate shills, they are at least useful idiots.
Quislings come in all forms.
--
BMO
FUD is all the Libertarians have. History shows their ideals wrong every time they are tried.
Like any idealism, the ideal is a pure form. Nothing survives first contact with humanity. Our inherent greed, selfishness, and lazyness will corrupt it.
Socialism looks like a utopia on the surface. In reality the lazy people do only as much as they absolutely have to and take all they can get in return. The greedy rise to the top and siphon off the lion's share for themselves.
Capitalism looks like a great economic option. but again, the lazy sink to the bottom and drag down the economy while the greedy hoard all the resources while trying to get the high score on their bank accounts.
Libertarianism looks like a great way for selfish people to kill off the poor and handicapped. But in reality the poor and handicapped are reluctant to be killed off.
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic. All net neutrality does is ensure the playing field stays level. You have to keep in mind that cable companies/broadcasters want to be the sole content provider, and they want you to pay them for it. They don't want Netflix; they don't want YouTube. You may not be old enough to recall when the cable providers tried very hard to degrade service to customers requesting Netflix because it was eating into their own pay-per-view model. When that didn't work, they decided to extort money from content providers and degrade the service until they got paid. Comcast was caught unambiguously doing this.
As netizens, we want the packets we request delivered unimpeded and unscrutinized to our browser. Tiered pricing takes care of getting video at the desired quality over simpler sites. If I'm only browsing eBay I'll get the low-end. If I'm viewing Netflix, I'll have to pay for the turbo-whatever. That should be my choice as a consumer.
Net neutrality makes it far easier for smaller players to compete. They don't have to have the muscle to negotiate with major ISPs they would otherwise need to in a non-nn environment.
Pointing to the LA Times article is weird too, if you weren't being sarcastic. It's basically a highly speculative non-issue, endorsed by a representative whose top contributing industry is the movie/television/music industry. The top 3 of Rep Walden's 4 contributors are the National Association of Broadcasters, Comcast, and 21st Century Fox. I wouldn't exactly call him "impartial" on the matter.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
They didn't pay for more bandwidth. You ALREADY paid for that bandwidth (say, 5mbit down). Comcast decided they didn't want to provide you 5mbit worth of Netflix, though, without Netflix ALSO paying, even though Netflix had already paid whoever they have as an ISP on their end.
This wasn't Netflix running out of bandwidth and having to increase their uplink speed, and it wasn't the consumer running out of bandwidth and having to pay to increase their download speed. This was Comcast deciding that Netflix was causing you (and your peers) to use too much of your already-paid for bandwidth. Comcast couldn't keep up with the consistent and simultaneous demand on what you supposedly had access to. So, instead, it throttled Netflix (which users saw as being Netflix's problem - hey, Netflix can't keep up!) and then charged Netflix to unthrottle (which users saw as Netflix "buying more bandwidth" so Netflix could keep up). In reality, it was Comcast that essentially oversold their bandwidth (you can have 5mbit down! oh, wait, nevermind, we can't supply all this bandwidth all at once; hey, a lot of it is being used by Netflix, maybe we could get them to pay more so it doesn't look like we were unprepared for demand on services we sold!)
This isn't unlike an airline overselling their flights. The difference is that when a flight fills up and customers who already paid for their tickets can't actually fit on the plane anymore, the airline doesn't start charging the destination more because the destination is using too much space on their plane. They give the customers who can't get on the plane at the very least a free transfer, and I think they get a free future lfight or something, too? Or a refund + flight? Something like that. In other words, the airliner realizes that part of overselling means that you have to deal with the consequences that occasionally come up with overselling... and "deal with" doesn't mean "charge someone else for your own lack of space that you sold as though you had more space than you actually did."
TL;DR: Comcast oversold their bandwidth and decided to make Netflix pay for it.
The article is full of colorful language about network neutrality advocates, but also some sound reasoning that is unfortunately based on technical misunderstandings or misinformation. Once you look past the mischaracterizations (it's a political piece, after all - you speak to your audience and insult everyone who disagrees with you before you even consider making a point!), it's actually not that bad. There are lots of items in it that I'd like to respond to, as if I could fix the author's misunderstandings, but I'll just pick a one:
The more good content that providers make available, the more consumers will demand access to sites and apps, and the more ISPs will invest in the infrastructure to facilitate delivery.
That's what we want, but that isn't what is happening. The ISPs have little economic incentive to invest in infrastructure since they are mostly monopolies. That's why Comcast chose, instead of upgrading their bandwidth when customers started watching Netflix, to pressure Netflix into co-locating servers within Comcast's network. They only could do that because they are a monopoly. Comcast customers could not choose to switch to another provider, and Netflix cannot choose to route around Comcast.
One would think that after 10 years of political teeth-gnashing, regulatory rule making, and relentless litigating, there would by now be a strong economic case for net neutrality—a clear record of harmful practices and agreements embodying the types of behavior that only regulation can pre-empt. But there isn't.
This sounds like someone citing their ignorance on a topic as evidence that something didn't happen. In general, the authors need to recognize that: :-) Clearly they never had to dial-up to Prodigy to see one "web site" and then use Compuserve to see another one, then dial AOL to email someone else.
- ISPs are tied to cable/telecom monopolies.
- ISPs can't pick different "business models" without impacting individuals' free speech.
- We learned these lessons from what came before the internet.
- We've had real issues without Network Neutrality.
It will be interesting to see how "broken" the internet is in 10 years. Usually those predicting doom and gloom fade away. We shall see, eh?
No regulations, no permits, no artificial barriers to entry. Open competition. Cool.
I want to lay my own fiber in your neighborhood. So I bring my backhoes and dig up your street and lawn. Barbie down the street wants to lay fiber too, so she gets her backhoes. Perhaps you can see that unregulated open competition for infrastructure would be a big mess.
I have libertarianish views, and I hear what you're saying, but what you call the problem is not really the problem. The problem is trying to privatize infrastructure we all share.
The most logical entity to own infrastructure is The People. Call me a socialist, communist, whatever, but that's how it is.
But people don't like government, so they "privatize", which is to say, hand a monopoly to private hands.
So your choice. Regulated public ownership. Regulated localized monopolies. Unregulated libertarian fantasy of every american with a dream driving backhoes through your yard.
1. Pick a problem, any problem.
2. Claim it can be solved with laissez faire capitalism and will be worsened with any form of government intervention.
3. Ignore any evidence to the contrary.
In this article, the author acts as though the threat of data discrimination from cable and phone companies is fantastical speculation. But it's already happened, and so many times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... In most markets, people only have one or two choices for a broadband connection, so they can't vote with their dollars effectively to resolve the problem. Much as I enjoy the elegance of free market principles, the Invisible Hand is not gonna fix this one.
All that is correct, but you're also forgetting WWI and WWII: before this, the US still wasn't that industrialized, though it certainly had become somewhat industrialized during the Gilded Age and Industrial Revolution. After WWII, it was the last industrialized power left standing without any significant major wartime damage, and had massively industrialized itself for the war effort. After the dust settled, American industry got extremely rich helping to rebuild everyone else. It's taken decades for that to finally wear off.
Basically, the US won the lottery.
Tack onto that the GI Bill, which helped the US become the world leader in post secondary education.
Taking a crap ton of able bodied unemployed men and paying for their education helped elongate that post-war economic boom.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
You're analogy is all wrong.
A similar situation would be if you bought road infrastructure via subscription, which is then used by the post office to deliver your mail. You pay a monthly fee for a guaranteed 55 mph road speed; however, you find that although most traffic can travel down the last 5-mile stretch to your house at 55 mph, the post office's mail truck can't travel faster than 20 mph due to the road infrastructure not being sufficiently upgraded. When you call to complain to the road infrastructure company, they tell you it's the post office's fault because the post office is refusing to pay to upgrade the roads.
Personally, this would leave me asking, "Why is this the post office's fault? I pay you, the road infrastructure company, for guaranteed road speed to my house -- not the post office!"
The short of it, is that Comcast is selling the service, guaranteeing a certain speed, not providing it due to intentionally avoiding upgrading their routers, and then telling their customer that the issue is Netflix's fault because they wont pay up.
Netflix even offered to pay for the routers -- and even install them -- and Comcast STILL refused. Not until Netflix started paying Comcast to house their servers inside their network did users get the bandwidth they are paying Comcast for when using the Netflix service.
The primary reason there is usually only a very small number of ISP's that serve a particular area is simple, and it doesn't involve tin foil hats or conspiracy theories. It is that building broadband infrastructure is fucking expensive. Everything from the hardware, to the permits, but especially the construction.
The problem with that theory is that I was actually alive and paying attention when the local monopolies were created...and your argument is EXACTLY the argument made by the various cable companies to get the government to GRANT them a monopoly in the various local areas. What nobody in government thought about (and if you tried to say it, you were called a crackpot) was, if cable was a natural monopoly, why did they need the government to grant them a monopoly? Wouldn't the company that did the best just end up with a monopoly?
Except that isn't what happened. What happened was that local municipalities were allowed to grant local monopolies for cable service. Then once every area where it was profitable to offer cable service had cable service, the big players began buying up everyone else. It didn't matter that they had lousy service, they had a monopoly, and the local municipalities discovered that they no longer had any leverage because they could no longer take the franchise for the local area back and give it to someone else because there was no one else.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
But if actual economic freedom actually came from no regulations, Somalia would have solid gold toilet seats by now and we'd be sending food and medicine to all of Scandinavia.
which is what you'd get with absolutely unregulated governance-by-contract set up by those who have the assets that everyone needs to live and won't let them borrow or even buy it from them without agreeing to such dictatorial terms.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
No, freedom implies rule of law.
The Internet has been fine up to now without FCC intervention.
So it's not 'free' then right? There aren't laws governing the behavior of the ISPs so it can't be free.
'Freedom' is the express lack of restrictions, i.e. 'freedom of movement'. 'rule of law' specifically limits what is allowed and/or acceptable to society for the benefit of said society.
FCC regulation of UTILITIES is a restriction of the utility operator's activity for the benefit of society. You don't have 4 water systems in your town, you don't have 4 electric grids. Why should we have to have 4 sets of internet infrastructure to have competition?
ISPs, through franchising, have become defacto monopolies in entire areas and are behaving as such. Unless you build entirely separate infrastructure (i.e. 4 water systems) there is no competition and thus no free market. That is ALL the FCC is enforcing here - as a defacto monopoly you can't favor or disfavor traffic on your infrastructure.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
The Title II rules wouldn't have applied to that, as the FCC explicitly declined to intervene in cases like that. From their rationale:
As discussed, Internet traffic exchange agreements have historically been and will continue to be commercially negotiated. We do not believe that it is appropriate or necessary to subject arrangements for Internet traffic exchange (which are subsumed within broadband Internet access service) to the rules we adopt today.
Do you have another example?
I already paid Verizon to give me access to the internet (up AND down) at set speeds, they don't get to then charge the content provider that I have specifically requested content from another fee.
What part of "Net Neutrality" don't you understand? If content providers and residential customers are equal, they're going to be paying the same rates for the same kinds of pipe. And lo and behold, if I want a dedicated pipe, regardless of who I am or what content I'm dealing with, it's gonna cost an arm and a leg.
Who pays who and how much is based on supply and demand, not anybody's ideology of what should be free. It's why sometimes I have to pay to rent a room for special events, and other times people pay me to show up to do effectively the same event.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
If fact it happens all the time. Government IS that bad at doing things. Their inefficiency _far_ exceeds private profit.
It actually often evens out though. The USAF ended up reversing a number of privatization initiatives because what savings were realized were done so by the company hiring the USAF trained maintainers, and the moment those started running out, costs skyrocketed way beyond what doing it in house used to cost.
You have to be careful, there are actually tasks the government is more efficient on, and that can include things like maintaining vehicles.
I don't read AC A human right