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Zero-Rating Harms Poor People, Public Interest Groups Tell FCC (vice.com)
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."
On what the fck is 0rating
Is it possible that the wireless companies are playing a complex psychological game here, trying to turn public sentiment away from net neutrality, by first offering to not (in essence) charge for certain services, secretly expecting someone to raise complaints against the practice because it violates net neutrality, so they can then throw up their hands and say "Sorry, the FCC won't allow us to give this to you for free, so now we're forced to count it against your data cap"?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The argument appears to be that if they offer data for certain apps at a discounted rate, that effectively it means they are overcharging for other things, such as the more general internet service that people using their phone for all their internet would likely to be doing more of. I don't know if I buy it, but that appears to be the argument.
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.
basically on one side we have,
limited content, mostly preselected by others, offered at zero cost.
on other side,
unlimited content, which must be selected by consumer expending time and effort(esp brain), offered at a price.
economics of mass acceptance of 1st could eventually lead to limitation of all content even for those making 2nd choice, or at least ever higher prices in 2nd choice
but should government(fcc) decide to ban the 1st prevent that? or let the consumer decide (even if most will choose them 1st)? that is the question. harder to answer than it appears.
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.
I think the gist of this complaint, /. headline aside, is that zero-rating harms open competition and violates the FCC's policies towards net neutrality. The impact on poor people isn't the focus of it. An example might be how T-Mobile doesn't count Pandora traffic against the cap. While I might prefer to use another music service, I use Pandora since it doesn't count against the cap. Thus putting competitors at a disadvantage. Of course, large established players always have all sorts of advantages.
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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.'"
I'm struggling to find the argument for network neturality here
I'll help.
A company decides to give people unlimited data use on preferred, highly popular services. Services that those same communities really, really want.
A company decides to limit customer's access to the internet, while giving unlimited access to their business partners. This is done so that the companies can make more money. The term for this type of business practice is called racketeering. "Racketeering is the act of offering of a dishonest service (a 'racket') to solve a problem that wouldn't otherwise exist without the enterprise offering the service.
The companies benefiting from zero rating are also engaging in a business practice which is an attempt to keep their own income higher than they would be in an unrestricted market. The consumer is the one who has the least control of the situation and is thus the one most harmed.
"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
The argument is "because I'm rich, I can watch video from any site on the Internet I want (anything from Ted.com to $porn_site) without worrying about data caps, but poor people can only afford to use sites that are zero-rated which limits and/or censors them." Why should only rich people be able to watch Ted talks?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
If the solution is only a few people can have it, thus nobody should have it, and nobody should be better off because of other people being hurt, then you're just harming society.
It's okay for rich people to have toys the rest of us couldn't afford anyway *even if we took those toys away*.
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...you whiny liberal bitches. This is the free market at work. If the telecoms don't want to waste their time on squeezing money from low-lifes and bottom-feeders like "the poor", they don't have to. They should be free to run their businesses in whatever way they find most profitable. Right? So just STFU about net neutrality, and monopolies, all the rest of your socialist ideas.
Government interference to enforce net neutrality may be harmful to a free internet, but it is not harmful to the customer. Unlimited free markets invariably lead to monopolies and collusions between them to maximize profit, and to erect barriers for new entries.
Zero-rating is the new 800 number. Remember when you had to pay for long distance phone calls by the minute? Companies who wanted you to use their services would set up 800 numbers so you could call them for free. The receiver of the call paid the bill.
Zero-rated services likewise have to pay, or have to comply with certain rules, to be included in the zero-rating program.
800 numbers didn't kill the "neutrality" of phone calling, and I don't think zero-rating necessarily will kill off net neutrality. As long as every business has the same opportunity to become part of the zero-rating tier, and the costs aren't prohibitive, a form of neutrality is preserved. On the other hand, if the carrier only exempts its own services, and doesn't let other in, or makes it cost-prohibitive, then we have a problem.
"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?