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3 ISPs Have Spent $572 Million To Kill Net Neutrality Since 2008 (dslreports.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from DSLReports: A study by Maplight indicates that for every one comment submitted to the FCC on net neutrality (and there have been roughly 5 million so far), the telecom industry has spent $100 in lobbying to crush the open internet. The group found that Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) have spent $572 million on attempts to influence the FCC and other government agencies since 2008. "The FCC's decision, slated to be announced later this summer, will be a clear indicator of the power of corporate cash in a Trump administration," notes the report. "Public sentiment is on the side of keeping the Obama administration's net neutrality policies, which prevented internet companies from blocking, slowing or giving priority to different websites." Congressional lobbying forms indicate that Comcast alone has spent nearly $4 million on lobbying Congress on net neutrality issues from the end of 2014 through the first quarter of 2017.
For me, what I find most interesting is the amount of attention at least two of those entities have paid to trying to convince people that they're not for gutting the rules, yet are waging huge campaigns with their own money to do exactly that.
Sarbonn's blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/blog
First is that being a mega ISP is certainly a profitable business.
Second is that we really need better regulations of that business because that is money which should have been more difficult for them to spend. ie, Economically speaking there should have been a place within the business where that money would have had a much higher return on investment. eg Competitive infrastructure upgrades, R&D, etc. Lobbying/bribing is a poor investment in a competitive environment. Therefore, the environment isn't competitive enough.
So where do these ISPs hope to get a return on the ''investment'' in lobbying ? Answer: charging their customers more to access certain services; or having some services pay to get fast access to their customers. Either way this will not be to the advantage of those who the ISPs provide a connection to the Internet.
Oh, and they take action against competition.
I know this is Slashdot but for fucks sake "3 ISPs Have Spent $572 Million To Kill Net Neutrality Since 2008" NO THEY HAVEN'T. They have spent 572 million on lobbying part of which was spent on net neutrality, the amount spent on lobbying is disgusting, but slashdots inability to present basic fakes without twisting them is almost as sickening.
And those people hire well connected people - people who can speak directly with the politician one on one. Wine and dine them, give a nice gift for their daughter's wedding, and so on.
As for us peons, well we've gotta slog through the horseshit - make it a part-time job. Ever try talking to your US Congressman or Senator? You get some flunky who'll "relay" your message. Probably some college intern who drank the party's Kool-Aid. And with my Republican Congressional delegation, I'm sure my message will just get lost.
Couldn't they have just invested the $572M in other companies and projects or a mutual fund and reaped WAY more money that would be achieved by potentially gouging future customers?
These companies are not trying to kill Net Neutrality, They're altering it. They've positioned themselves now to were all outside traffic will come in at the same rate on the same pipe. While their proprietary services are on their intranet and not subject to same rules.
For example: Go90 will not be under the same rules as Netflix, Hulu, or YouTube. Verizon will not have to cap Go90 will not charge data rates for this service. But Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube cannot buy priority access. Over time the external streaming service will degrade and customers will start turning to Go90.
I know its not a popular view but when you make everyone the equal, the services that produce most of the consumed content is punished. So the viewers are also punished.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
"Why not let the market sort it out." Because the market doesn't encourage cheating and illegal practices? There are reasons why there are rules and regulations in markets where there is little to no competition and is considered an essential service. And yes I believe the Internet is an essential service.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
ISPs will forever piss me off. Instead of using the money to improve infrastructure and services to actually become appealing companies, they fucking piss it all into a pot to destroy the very service they're trying to deliver.
The only reason to spend half a billion dollars is if you think you can get more than that in return. Think of it as a way to show much they stand to gain at the public expense if network neutrality is defeated.
Sarcasm: not for everybody.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Ha! We're entering a death spiral of sarcasm. Didn't see a /s but get it now :-)
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Lobbying is guaranteed by the First Amendment. Individuals should always have the right to redress grievances with their representatives. Now whether businesses have protections under the bill of rights is one for the constitutional lawyers, but it seems like bullshit to me.
Generally, regulations HELP big corporations. I'm also suspect that Google and other big corps are lobbying hard on this front too. I trust neither AT&T, Google, nor the U. S. government. That is why, in general, not regulating things helps small businesses and the individual consumers.
I'm also wondering why the rush on this. The pro net neutrality guy at work says that there was once one such example but, according to slashdot, even that would not have fell within the new rules.
I found this interesting: FCC Chairman Ajit Pai: Why He's Rejecting Net Neutrality
It seems to me, that since these bozos are against net neutrality, Google et al should give them a taste of their own medicine. They could feed Comcast and AT&T employees shitty search results, like "12 reasons why net neutrality is a good thing; number 7 will shock you!" Or just a bunch of links to the FSF donation page.
If the internet is analogous to a network of roads, can't the road owners install toll booths to collect toll for certain (high-speed) lanes?
They can but when substantial numbers of roads become toll roads it hurts the economy badly. Roads are a public good. Read up on what that means. Same thing applies to internet delivery. When companies are allowed to discriminate between traffic for their own interest rather that that of the end consumer that is not a good thing.
Comcast, AT&T, Verizon... and, oh, by the way, the itty bitty National Cable & Telecommunications Association.
NCTA – The Internet & Television Association (formerly the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and commonly known as the NCTA) is the principal trade association for the U.S. broadband and pay television industries, representing more than 90% of the U.S. cable market,[2] more than 200 cable networks, and equipment suppliers and providers of other services to the cable industry.
So 3 ISPs and 200+ other companies together spent $572 million over 10 years. That's less than $300k per company per year.
But the truth wouldn't be good for nearly as many clicks, would it?
LMOL yeah ok Potsy
"The term was coined by Columbia University media law professor Tim Wu in 2003, as an extension of the longstanding concept of a common carrier, which was used to describe the role of telephone systems." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Citation needed.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
At the same time, should require that all monopolies WRT networking, by state and feds be dropped. No federal, state, or local law shall be allowed to force a network monopoly. IOW, it is time to allow real competition to take hold.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
.. consider what grotesque plans they must have in store to recoup those costs, shoudl they win the day.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
The term was coined by Columbia University media law professor Tim Wu
Which is all detailed out in the last link I provided. When I was referring to "as we know it", was referring to the courts affirming the right of the FCC to govern Broadband and the push for the classification of broadband as a Title II service. And it looks like I was wrong on the year, that was 2014, not 2013
I am 100% in favor of net neutrality, and smacking down the bullshit that internet providers get away with. I am also 100% against shitty click-bait journalism.
Think of all the internets they could've provided with that money...
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
You think there's no competition in the ISP business? Look at the Title II business world for competition. Where have you seen competition for POTS lines? Ever? No, this is veery, very clearly a monopoly lock-in. The objections by the big companies is that they can't expand, not that they can't keep raping you.
And oh,.by the way, the easy and blatantly legal way to prioritize internal traffic under the Obama "net neutrality" rules is merely to class your service as something different. "DTV rebroadcast" is different that "TCP traffic" and therefore should have a different priority. Easy, legal, and demonstrates the deliberate loophole in network neutrality.
If investors sue that the money used on lobbying against Network Neutrality is poorly spent, then the counter-arguments made by management showing how they can monetize lack of Network Neutrality are exactly the arguments for why we need Network Neutrality regulations.
These guys are so profitable that they can afford to spend $500 million yet they can not provide broadband access to large swaths of the country. African countries do better than this. China does better than this. Why can't we?
The issue is not net neutrality, but that the Obama administration had to have the Internet declared a regulated utility to give the FCC the power to impose net neutrality rules. Prior to the 1984 judicial breakup of the ATT monopoly, our long distance and local phone systems were owned and operated by ATT and its seven regional operating companies and were considered regulated public utilities. New product innovation and non-analog voice use of phone lines and connected devices were restricted and controlled by ATT, the FCC and state utility boards. Phone calls out of one's local area were very expensive. It is doubtful we would have the Internet, VOIP, etc., that we have today if ATT and government regulators still controlled the phone system. Prior to the breakup, it was illegal to link many consumer third party devices (think modem, routers, etc.) to the phone lines, unless approved by ATT and often with an expensive extra fee. In NYC in the late 1970's, when one picked up their landline phone, they were unable to complete a call because there had not been not enough available working telephone infrastructure to complete a call. Without the old ATT monopoly, we might have had some form of the public non-university Internet much sooner. Obama's government-controlled version of the Internet, under the guise of Net Neutrality, will stop Internet innovation, investment and price competition as it did previously under the old ATT publicly regulated utility concept. Let the Internet be free of public utility, government control regulation and in 10 to 20 years, today’s Internet will look as old fashion as rotary telephones and telephone copper land lines do today. Allow the Internet to continue to be an Obama government-regulated public utility under the smoke and mirrors of net neutrality and in 10-20 years it will be more expensive, unchanged, underfunded and deteriorating like most government controlled infrastructure and like the old monopolistic ATT public utility model.
All of the big ISPs in America also sell pay TV in various forms (AT&T has U-Verse TV and now DirecTV, Verizon has FiOS TV and all the cable companies sell Cable TV). They are seeing their highly profitable pay TV business disappear as people get their content from the Internet (legally or otherwise) and drop their pay TV plan (or drop expensive extra packages from their plan).
That's why they are spending the big bucks to shut down any competition as well (since the competition like Google or local government isn't going to be stopping people getting to all that nice online content and bypassing pay TV completly)
If you're going to play that game, maybe don't make the company with the mostly black logo the white guy?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.