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FCC's Ajit Pai Says Broadband Market Too Competitive For Strict Privacy Rules (arstechnica.com)
In an op-ed published on the Washington Post, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and his counterpart at the FTC have argued that strict privacy rules for ISPs aren't necessary in part because the broadband market is more competitive than the search engine market. From a report on ArsTechnica: Internet users who have only one choice of high-speed home broadband providers would probably scoff at this claim. But an op-ed written by Pai and Acting FTC Chair Maureen Ohlhausen ignored the lack of competition in home Internet service, focusing only on the competitive wireless broadband market. Because of this competition, it isn't fair to impose different rules on ISPs than on websites, they wrote. "Others argue that ISPs should be treated differently because consumers face a unique lack of choice and competition in the broadband marketplace," Pai and Ohlhausen wrote in their op-ed. "But that claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny either. For example, according to one industry analysis, Google dominates desktop search with an estimated 81 percent market share (and 96 percent of the mobile search market), whereas Verizon, the largest mobile broadband provider, holds only an estimated 35 percent of its market." [...] Instead of addressing the lack of competition in home Internet service, Pai and Ohlhausen simply didn't mention it in their op-ed. But they argued that ISPs shouldn't face stricter privacy rules than search engines and other websites because of the level of competition in broadband and the amount of data companies like Google collect about Internet users. "As a result, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Congress decided to disapprove the FCC's unbalanced rules," they wrote. "Indeed, the FTC's criticism of the FCC's rules last year noted specifically that they 'would not generally apply to other services that collect and use significant amounts of consumer data.'"
It would surprise me.
You're willing to post on Slashdot, which is full of trackers, but you don't want others tracking you. Why does Slashdot get a free pass?
Is this still planet Earth, or did I take a wrong turn somewhere? Not even Soviet Russia is sufficient to explain this deranged and tortured argument.
What has one to do with the other? You could just as well have said "No privacy for you because purple monkey dishwasher" and it would have made just about as much sense.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
C'mon folks your wireless carrier has been sniffing your data forever. So has cable companies. It's just now they can profit from you just like Google and Facebook.
Not saying we're watching... but we're watching.
I have access to more than a dozen search engines. I have access to 3 ISPs. Seems like there's more 4x as much competition in the search market, at least in my locality.
My understanding is that I'm lucky to have more than one ISP available, and absolutely blessed to have more than two. Everybody has the same access to search engines, though, and I'm pretty sure nobody has access to more than a dozen ISPs.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Use a paid VPN service outside your own country with a good reputation to stop your ISP from sniffing your traffic.
Block google trackers, and do not use google search or mail.
Block other trackers with uMatrix, uBlock Origin, and others.
Do not ever for any reason use Facebook. Block their like buttons and scripts.
Encrypt your emails end to end.
About now someone always chimes in with "... but it's not perfect, so you might as well not even try." Bullshit. You can frustrate their efforts considerably and if everyone did, it would make a lot of that shit no longer viable. The perfect is the enemy of the good. Do what you can to retain your own privacy.
I have more options for natural gas providers than internet, and I even live in a competitive area, with two cable providers plus the usual DSL and so on.
Must be the good shit.
How about we reverse this and start with, my data is MINE. You don;t touch it without a warrent or at least little thing called "probable cause". -start there.
This trend of turning ISPs into spies and intiatives that make no sense claim doing privacy is too complicated or expensive is really getting on my nerves.
No worries though, it just pushes more users to use encryption and learn better security practices. When all traffic is encrypted what wil lthey regulate then?
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
"No privacy for you because purple monkey dishwasher"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Pai is nothing more than a shill for the telecom industry. Another gator added to the swamp by the Hustler in Chief.
Welcome to the Trump Administration where whatever craziness you say is overshadowed by the crazier things the President says. He says that the broadband market is more competitive than the search engine market and (because of this) ISPs should be allowed to sell privacy data of their customers.
First of all let's address the main problem with his argument which is the false comparison. There are only a few players in the search engine market which is true; however, that is due to competition based on consumer choices. Many consumer choose to use Google over Bing. Many consumers cannot choose one ISP over another as there is often only one choice. Indeed if a consumer chooses to switch to Bing, it is as simple as not using Google. Many consumers cannot switch ISPs. Second whether or not Google has more of a marketshare than Bing does not mean Comcast can sell your browsing history.
The main problem with comparing whether Google has a right to sell your data and Comcast does not all comes down to implied agreements. When you use Google for free, it is with the implied consent that your search history is being collected and monetized in exchange for the search service. When you pay Comcast for an Internet connection, there is no implied consent that you paying for a service means that Comcast makes money on your Internet data.
Personally the sale of data is blatant attempt by ISPs to make more money by trying to legislate an exception to the rules. Their argument is that "Google does it, so should we."
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Is good enough excuse for everyone else to be bad? Since when we become so simple minded?
And it is not true that google has 85%. It is 100% for all that matters.
Any ISP you use will have your verified name, address, and payment info, maybe even credit history. Unless I log into a search engine and give it to them, I don't think they have any of this information on me, and I'm not required to give it to them to use their service.
That your web browsing history it's that intimately associated with who you are is why it should be protected.
I have exactly one choice for my ISP. One, unless I want to use a cellular service. I hope these mofo liars get what's coming to them. A curse on all their houses.
My ISP choices are the same as the last presidential election, either choice sucks.
Hah, prove yourself = variety
Is that it's "too hard" to do what is their disadvantage.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
The Internet is no longer a niche only a few people care about (see SOPA). Republicans are in for a surprise when democrats run ads with this shit against them and it proves to be effective. Trumps own base is against this. FFS INFOWARS is against it.
This issue is an overwhelming loser with the public. Nobody believes ISPs should be allowed to stalk you online and no amount of weaving shit into gold is going to mask the smell. From what I remember public polling on this was something like 11% of the general public favoring the republican bill.
In a first year course for e.g. maths students, seeing why this is bullshit, and a percentage laden smokescreen. It is a common naive oversight to abstract away the differences between disparate parts of a broad market sector, and
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
I don't often get to trot that out one.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Our government, is for the people by the people. The people come first. Not commercial concerns. These comments are like saying the banking market is too competitive for strict privacy rules. Or the healthcare industry is too competitive for strict privacy rules. It is the people. Not the businesses. Individuals needs come first when privacy is concerned.
Google dominates because they are good at what they do, but you are not forced to use Google. There is competition like Bing, DuckduckGo, etc, but they simply aren't as good as Google. And even alternative search engines disappeared, one does not have to dig up a city to build a competitor and you don't have to fight all sorts of small-government laws to become a service provider.
Only idiots believe what they are saying.
Please how are isps going to inject ads into web site without getting sued? we have gone through this before with scum sucking malware toolbars that got sued and lost. An ISP has no right to insert their ads into any site no more then my cable provider can insert ads into the channels i watch..inject ads into my site...PLEAAAAAAAAAAAAAASEEEEEEEE.. i need the money lol.
Jack of all trades,master of none
To compare a search engine, which someone can choose or not choose to use, to a broadband provider, where there is only one, or if you are lucky two, to choose from in any given area is the literal definition of apples and oranges.
Off the top of my head I can count six different search engines I could use. In my area there are exactly two broadband providers, and both offer the same high prices for the same slow speeds.
As to this supposed "industry analysis", who did the analysis, Comcast? Of course they would say there is plenty of competition.
We knew this shill would be completely against consumer rights and his words and deeds are proof. We can all expect even higher prices and worse service than we already have, forcing the U.S. further down the list of industrialized countries with broadband service. Meanwhile, the con artist will claim it's a great thing for consumers to have only one or two options.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Nobody believes ISPs should be allowed to stalk you online and no amount of weaving shit into gold is going to mask the smell
It is very hard to reconcile an alleged desire for privacy with the number of people who have voluntarily signed up for Facebook and use Google searches, both of which track people far outside their particular service.
The Internet is no longer a niche only a few people care about (see SOPA). Republicans are in for a surprise when democrats run ads with this shit against them and it proves to be effective. Trumps own base is against this. FFS INFOWARS is against it.
This issue is an overwhelming loser with the public. Nobody believes ISPs should be allowed to stalk you online and no amount of weaving shit into gold is going to mask the smell. From what I remember public polling on this was something like 11% of the general public favoring the republican bill.
Rachael Maddow had a poll on last night that showed that 11% said Trump should sign that Bill, and 74% said "No" and "Hell, No!".
And here we are, with our "Representative Governance".
But exactly WHO are they REPRESENTING???
ask yourself the same questions about each:
how fast can you change it?
how easy is it to do?
how costly is it to do?
how many did you have to choose from?
answers for nearly every american:
broadband provider:
not very, 1-2 weeks, perhaps, from initial order of new one to successful cancellation of old one
difficult. and the providers themselves are much of the problem
very
none, 1, rarely 2.
remember "broadband" is defined by the fcc (at least for now) as at least 25mbit/sec download speed and 3mbit/sec upload speed. that pretty much means fiber (google, fios, uverse or similar) or docsis 3.0 cable only. dsl dont cut it most the time, cellular certainly doesn't either, and satellite definitely doesn't. other 'choices' like direct connects are out of the reach of residential and nearly all business customers.
search engine?
very easy, just 'go there' and 'use it'
very easy
no cost at all
hundreds (here's a little help in case you're blinded by marketing or placement in products or software)
Who ever makes that comparison just doesn't understand the internet and should be out shoveling manure. Search engines can't read my email or my medical information in transit over the internet. My ISP can and now with the new regulations will, and will sell that information to boot. It is truly an enlightened age we live in.
He is being intellectually dishonest by lumping wireless Internet providers such as Verizion in the same "Market" as high-speed internet providers such as comcast, charter, etc. These are two different products, my wireless internet on my smartphone is a fraction of the speed i expect from wired internet on my desktop. Also what i expect to do on the smartphone is often different (though there is some overlap) with what I expect to do on a desktop/laptop. Different markets, different products.
ALSO: Google has 81% market share in search because THEY ARE THE BEST SEARCH ENGINE. The marketplace has legitimately decided that they are the best at what they do which is why we all use google so often.
This is markedly different from the home internet market, where comcast and charter control almost 70% market share. They got there certainly not by being the best provider, but by taking advantage of regional regulations and municipal contracts to ensure they are the only provider in the cities they service and agreeing not to compete with each other in those regions.
It's driving massive interest and adoption of VPN technology, encryption, and general awareness of what your options are to maintain privacy online.
In a hilarious twist, most of the VPN technologies also cause huge headaches for firms targetting and deliverty ads, too - thus likely costing them money.
It ain't all bad.
..don't panic
You know what's more insane is that they can grab all of your passwords, bank account information, etc.
Just going to tunnel through germany openvn back to the states. Fuck it. If comcast wants to sell the information that there's an encrypted pipe going to germany they're welcome to. VPS with 1TB data is $5 a month these days. You could probably setup your own TOR network in 5 regions for $25 a month
moox. for a new generation.
...of what Ajit Pai is smoking or snorting?
If he can comeout with claims so patently absurd like this one, he must have access to some truly GREAT STUFF to smoke... or shove up his nose. No wait!
There's no room up his nose for anything else because it's stuck up the tailpipes of the oligargical ISPs and their lobbyists in "the swamp".
He must be high as a kite that guy for seeing that market as "too competitive".
Ajit Pai is a very bad liar and shill. He's just plain bad at spin, angle, misdirection... and yet he is a Republican.
That's the confusing part.
If
strict privacy rules for ISPs aren't necessary
then the ISPs wouldn't have a problem with the rules being put in place then, would they? So of course they ARE fsking necessary.
Nothing fucking more needs to be said.
> "Indeed, the FTC's criticism of the FCC's rules last year noted specifically that they 'would not generally apply to other services that collect and use significant amounts of consumer data.'"
This is correct. However, the solution wasn't to tear the FCC's rules down, it was to apply those rules to all the other services equally. And then watch the entire planet panic when Facebook and Google go offline because their business models are suddenly illegal.
Too competitive? I would submit that the broadband industry is *least* competitive major industry in America. If you have any choice in providers at all, you are lucky.
Protect your browser with the Force Safe Search add-on
Why does this stop at ISPs? Maybe your local branch library could get in on this action and get some data mining money from their usage.
Maybe your bank should get in on this too. Everything you purchase with your card can be pretty valuable information for market research.
Maybe we should all just have mandated computer chips installed in our brains that allows the Feds to sell thought mining to marketers so they can better pillage our wallets. Just think of it. "Wow, I can't believe this is so cheap, I would have paid more." - And now you will. Maybe conservatives hell bent on getting rid of tax revenue could finally get their wish with this mandate. Life will be abysmal in every way, but no taxes so hurray!
I personally think there needs to be a very upfront mandatory message from any company collecting data on you for revenue purposes. This message needs to be very visible and they should have to publicly divulge how much their users are worth based on the data they collect.
In a lot of ways the folks here (myself included) that have been around since the early days of the net are partly to blame. Companies tried hard to cash in hard on ridiculously intrusive ads to keep their website afloat which most of us have blocked since it was possible. They tried subscription services that ultimately lead to their demise as the value to the consumer was lower than the cost of upkeep. Which ultimately brings us to now where they eventually realized they could sell their user data to stay afloat and their users would for the most part, be none the wiser. I have no idea how this mess could be fixed outside of legislating the problem away. But how do you define who can and who cannot collect data? That is very challenging to put in legal words that will not greatly upset the current internet environment we know. Maybe we need new backend solutions, subsidies and such, to lower the cost of some of the most publicly beneficial websites. But doing so would be difficult without folks screaming that we were about to nationalize youtube or wikipedia. The situation just sucks...
because the broadband market is more competitive than the search engine market.
Maybe I missed that left turn at albuquerque https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
but what the heck does search engines have to do with the horrendous lack of broad band competition?
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
I own a small ISP trying to compete with these big guys. You would be surprised how many people still don't give a fuck about their home internet connection. If they don't work from home or have teenagers bugging them about it then they really don't care.
CAPTCHA: Pitiful
At this point, I dunno if Ajit really thinks the entire US population are composed solely on completely ignorant people with low IQs and pretends he doesn't know better by trying to come up with this cringeworthy "I actually know nothing about what I'm talking" poorly thought out excuse, or if he simply is THIS dumb. Doesn't help that he has one of the most punchable faces in the universe too.
Statistics of usage have NOTHING to do with monopolistic practices. It's about choice. Everyone and anyone who uses Google for search right now can change to another search engine if they feel uncomfortable with it. In fact, anyone reading this should do so. Go to duckduckgo.com, install their plugin, and you'll never end up at google.com again.
As for ISPs, it is the reality for tons and tons of people that they only have one or two choices where they live, and most of the times these companies will collude on pricing, schemes like data collection and whatnot to exploit their users further leaving them no choice but to accept whatever crap that is thrown at consumers.
I don't even have to live in the US to understand this. Moving out of your home to another state or area just so you can change providers is quite obviously way more challenging, when not outright impossible, than typing a different URL in the search bar, and it's useless to do so when it's expected that ISPs will copy the worst practices from one another when they realize how profitable it could be for them.
Furthermore, the role of the FCC and the FTC should be to protect consumer's rights, not to side with companies to let them unfairly profit from consumers even more than they already do. If a law or regulation is not comprehensive or fair enough, you first draft and pass one that is better for consumers overall before killing what little protection we could have.
You guys can stop worrying about terrorism and war in US's near future... if this is an example of what politicians have to say after majorly screwing up the entire US population so that ISPs can effectively spy on all of you, the US won't need enemies to implode itself. And it's not that I'm criticizing... I live in a country which was imploded by politicians corruption just as well.
this is a late april fools joke, right?
Woops. Ajit Pai outed Verizon's business plan. Those delusional mooks think they can out-Google Google by sucking in even more data than Google. I don't think Verizon and Comcast wanted him to actually repeat the bullshit reasoning they gave him in their policy paper that he's slavishly adopting. So hard to bribe good help these days...
an op-ed written by Pai and Acting FTC Chair Maureen Ohlhausen ignored the lack of competition in home Internet service, focusing only on the competitive wireless broadband market
Is he saying that I have "choice" because I can relocate my household if I want to change ISPs?
They're saying that you have "choice" because you can switch from Verizon DSL or Verizon fiber to at least one of AT&T cellular, Sprint cellular, or T-Mobile cellular.
People move around with cell data plans, can have their display glanced at by random strangers.
People know police could demand a cell device as part of an "investigation" (legal or not).
So people might be more careful with a cell device. Sure they have lots of different options with cell networks but their data use is more careful.
A desktop user at home is secure in their papers and rights. A court needs to provide a reason to enter their home and search their desktop computer.
So a home broadband connection needs even more privacy. A person does their medical, tax, work searches from the security of their own home broadband.
Not in public on a cell network. If an area only has one good broadband network provider then that needs privacy protections.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Well yeah most people are fine with a 50Mbps connection for one person you can do pretty much anything you want with that speed.
Out where I live the local WISPs have been very sucessful the first one stopped expanding a few years ago as they got as big as the owners could handle a few months ago it merged with a regional chain ISP to compete with the city owned WISP that went into competition with them.
Now the chain offers 50Mbps service and the city only offers 10Mbps. But the city is expanding into another three neighboring towns that currently have no ISP or WISP.
You can't get everyone but at least 3/4 of the houses near one have a little antenna from one of the two WISPs I mentioned. There are no wired options out where I live.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Are you fucking kidding me? In 5 minutes any moron can set up a "search website". Tell me how long it takes to become a broadband provider. Go ahead look it up.
That's funny. That kind of choice is like saying a long-haul over the road trucking company has a choice in their transportation capability because they can switch from Peterbuilt tractors to one of Ford, Chevy, or Dodge pickup trucks.
I couldn't even switch from Verizon fiber back to Verizon DSL; Verizon yanked the copper as soon as they installed the fiber.