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Zero-Rating Harms Poor People, Public Interest Groups Tell FCC (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the along-the-lines-of-net-neutrality dept.

An anonymous reader links to an article on Motherboard: The nation's largest internet service providers are undermining US open internet rules, threatening free speech, and disproportionately harming poor people by using a controversial industry practice called "zero-rating," a coalition of public interest groups wrote in a letter to federal regulators on Monday. Companies like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T use zero-rating, which refers to a variety of practices that exempt certain services from monthly data caps, to undercut "the spirit and the text" of federal rules designed to protect net neutrality, the principle that all content on the internet should be equally accessible, the groups wrote. Zero-rated plans "distort competition, thwart innovation, threaten free speech, and restrict consumer choice -- all harms the rules were meant to prevent," the groups wrote. "These harms tend to fall disproportionately on low-income communities and communities of color, who tend to rely on mobile networks as their primary or exclusive means of access to the internet."

9 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. "Free" is harmful? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    So by NOT charging people for what can be a sizable amount of data usage, we're harming poor people?

    Further, why in this sissy state the Loony Left is breeding, must someone always be harmed or be a victim? Honestly, you can't do anything good anymore, or some Libtard will cry foul because they didn't get "their fair share."

    1. Re:"Free" is harmful? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So by NOT charging people for what can be a sizable amount of data usage, we're harming poor people?

      Yes. The data usage is not "free", it is just incorporated into the base monthly fee and higher charges for other data. So the ISPs are charging you more to view content they do not own, in order to promote content that they do own.

      It is sort of like Trump's Mexican wall: The ISPs are building the wall around their garden, and making YOU pay for it.

    2. Re:"Free" is harmful? by fey000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't give a rat's ass about the socio-economic status of the people affected.

      I do care about net neutrality.

      The idea that penalising certain data sources is harmful to a free internet seems well accepted. The fact that our retarded legislators couldn't figure out what so many were shouting at them is the real problem. There is no goddamn difference between penalising source A and "helping" every source *except* A. These zero-ratings is the exact thing we said would happen. It's penalising the companies that do not pay for "premium" services.

    3. Re:"Free" is harmful? by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, the argument is basically that the poor make bad choices and the world should be re-arranged to accommodate those poor choices.

      Government exists (in the best case) for the sole purpose of stopping people from making too many antisocial decisions. We can argue about how far that influence should reach, but when the majority of people say they want something and then work against that thing, perhaps there is some merit to the notion.

      The government governs best which governs least, but how little you can get away with is a sticky debating point.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. Re:Legislating pricing is doomed to failure by mrchaotica · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Legislating pricing" is not what's happening here. You imply that net neutrality is some sort of government subsidy; it is not. In reality, it's basically just a rule that ISPs have to provide the whole Internet instead of picking some subset (often "coincidentally" controlled by them) to provide at the base cost and then charging extra for the rest.

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  3. Re: A complex game? by Chewbacon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So ban datacaps?

    --
    Chewbacon
    The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
  4. Re:can someone give the TL;DR by jonsmirl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here's how you abuse zero rating. Make up an ISP plan with 1KB/mth data cap. Then charge $1000/kb overage (like a typical Verizon plan). Then go around and charge Facebook/Google/etc fat fees to deliver their data to the consumer for 'free' outside of exorbitant data plan cap. Now you have achieved total net discrimination on a plan that is net neutral. it is discriminatory because this absurd fee arrangement was created to manipulate you into only using the sites that have paid for zero rating and to abandon the rest of the Internet. Of course the ISP arranges things so that Facebook/Google/etc are yielding them more profit than when you were paying for data access. Facebook/Google/etc go along with this because it increases their profitability by driving more traffic to them.

    You then say "this is cool, I get free Internet". But you aren't getting free Internet, you are only getting Facebook/Google/etc who pay paid for zero rating. You are unable to access any other web site unless you pay $1000/kb for the data. And of course you won't do that.

  5. Re:can someone give the TL;DR by tsqr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Make up an ISP plan with 1KB/mth data cap. Then charge $1000/kb overage (like a typical Verizon plan).

    Typical?? Verizon's lowest tier data plan is 1 GB/month. Overage rate is $15/GB.

  6. Racist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "communities of color"

    Can someone explain to me why this policy has a racial bias? Or is this just along the lines of "terrorists and pedophiles" and "think of the children" type arguments?