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No Matter What Happens With Net Neutrality, an Open Internet Isn't Going Anywhere, Says Former FCC Chairman (recode.net)
Michael K. Powell, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, writing for Recode: With an ounce of reflection, one knows that none of this will come to pass, and the imagined doom will join the failed catastrophic predictions of Y2K and massive snow storms that fizzle to mere dustings -- all too common in Washington, D.C. Sadly, rational debate, like Elvis, has left the building. The vibrant and open internet that Americans cherish isn't going anywhere. In the days, weeks and years following this vote, Americans will be merrily shopping online for the holidays, posting pictures on Instagram, vigorously voicing political views on Facebook and asking Alexa the score of the game. Startups and small business will continue to hatch and flourish, and students will be online, studiously taking courses. Time will prove that the FCC did not destroy the internet, and our digital lives will go on just as they have for years. This confidence rests on the fact that ISPs highly value the open internet and the principles of net neutrality, much more than some animated activists would have you think. Why? For one, because it's a better way of making money than a closed internet.
the ecommerce sites or the ISPs, I would think a closed internet is better for the ISPs
When you cant win, ad hominem.
In the run up to a very large shopping season, wouldn't it be terrible if all of a sudden Amazon was slow?
People also usually have time off, and Netflix is entertainment, it would really suck if that was slow to.
Good thing you can purchase the special ISP provided "holiday package" to make sure that your surfing of Amazon and Netflix doesn't slow down over the holidays.
And hey, Amazon, Netflix, i'm afraid before we can offer this package to our serf's You're going to have to pay us, "benevolent ISP" about a billion dollars a month.
This confidence rests on the fact that ISPs highly value the open internet and the principles of net neutrality, much more than some animated activists would have you think. Why? For one, because it's a better way of making money than a closed internet.
I didn't know the former chairman of the FCC was Gary Busey.
Are these the same ISPs who have been quoted as saying they would absolutely love to limit things and do the horrible things that Net Neutrality prevents - if only it weren't for those meddling kids and their stupid Net Neutrality rules keeping them from doing so?
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
What they describe sounds an *awful* lot like a common carrier. This is all madness, and maddening. You know they are desperate and this is a hugely important matter by the level of their deceit. They are mistaken if they believe our intelligence is down there in the gutter as well.
No ISPs are managed by MBAs. They compete with other ISPs. It is so very tempting to squeeze 1$ more revenue this quarter, even if it means losing 3$ next year or 30 $ over the next decade. The managers know their stock options, the vesting schedule, the exercise price and bonus trigger stock price. Meeting that is of paramount importance for the C?O crowd. Getting 1$ more in their personal pay is a lot more important to them than causing 50$ worth of damage to the company and its long term assets. These managers have an average tenure of about 3 years. There are very very few managers who stick with the same company for decades.
If by chance one company decides to go for the long term play, Wall Street will immediately punish it. Its stock will plunge, its revenue will be compared to its competitors. The pressure is relentless and there is no way for a public company to recover. Moderate size companies will manipulate their stock price downwards, and make it attractive enough for Private Equity. Usually by dumping their insiders' stock and negative guidance in the quarterly calls. The true viability and strength will be disclosed to private investors, and once the public stock holders are paid off at the fire sale prices, the private equity firms will richly reward the executives who got them the plum. But these ISPs are too big for private equity. Even at fire sale prices, the market valuation would be so high it is off limits for private equity. Making them bankrupt intentionally would help them take it private, but bankruptcy is a public court managed affair, not the hush hush under the table dealings with private equity. So it is not likely to happen.
So it will be a race to the bottom. So they will race to the bottom. Some eagerly, some reluctantly, but it is to the bottom they will race.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Unfortunately, corporations can't be trusted to do the right thing, even when it is in their own best interest. CEOs are so focused on short-term gains that they will frequently do things that hurt their own long-term money making ability. A closed internet means more control (and thus lower risks). even if the future rewards are less than with an open internet. They would rather have 100% of a small pie than a small slice of a much larger pie.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Americans will be merrily shopping online for the holidays, posting pictures on Instagram, vigorously voicing political views on Facebook and asking Alexa the score of the game.
Consequences of getting rid of net neutrality in a nutshell.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
This is really a fight over advertising revenue. Google, Facebook get it now, the content providers and ISPs get nothing. The FCC has listened to the ISPs, and ignored the content providers. Very soon each consumer ISP will have a favored search engine, and will split the advertising revenue with that engine. Other engines won't be available. The preferred engine won't necessarily be the largest. Google is likely to assume it is too good to share, and the ISPs will turn to specialized firms that are willing to share. As for Facebook, it is probably to entrenched to diss, and probably won't have to share revenue.
There is also the matter of streaming revenue. Video streaming competes with cable TV, so Netflix et al will need to compensate the cable ISPs for lost cable revenue in order to be carried.
As for online shopping, the ISPs would like a share of that revenue, but granting one service a monopoly probably wouldn't be practical. They might settle for demanding a small share of all sales from any significant vendor.
Because there is competition among wireless services, none of this may happen on wireless. Actually, if the cable ISPs are sufficiently greedy, competition may develope for wired access.
They are trying to give us hope !!! We are doomed !!!!
The issue was never, "this is going to bring the internet to it's knees" it was "this is going to allow ISPs to exploit and block services they compete with". You need only look at the past to see the services they have blocked and slowed in the past to know what the future holds.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
We already know what Comcast wants to do: charge the sites, such as Netflix for access to Comcast's customers.
The net result is not higher Internet bills, but higher Netflix and other bills.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The vibrant and open internet that Americans cherish isn't going anywhere. In the days, weeks and years following this vote, Americans will be merrily shopping online for the holidays, posting pictures on Instagram, vigorously voicing political views on Facebook and asking Alexa the score of the game.
That sounds closest to the nightmare scenario we're trying to avoid, where users are (even more) locked into only the most popular commercial services from Silicon Valley megacorps, who will be the most capable of paying for the "fast lanes" (most likely in the form of zero-rating).
Startups and small business will continue to hatch and flourish,
Hatch and die in the nest is more like it...they won't be able to afford "fast lanes" to compete with the most established players.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Yes it was, because we and the ISP really didn't know what lines to draw. Most ISP stayed open just because they didn't know what the legal standing would be if they tried to throttle a site. And for the most part sites they thought about throttling made some private deals before it hit the legal system.
Back before Net Neutrality I was afraid to say to my ISP who also offered phone service, that I was using a VOIP phone in fear that I would be on some watch list as troublesome customer.
Reversing Net Neutrality will only open the door to a bunch of government regulations, as ISP find ways to abuse their new found rights, smaller laws will be in place to regulate each one to prevent going too far.
For the GOP who hates government regulations, Canceling one simple one, will only open up thousands of smaller complex ones.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Open Internet = You will always be able to make purchases from vendors approved by your service provider.
Others will not be so open....
We're on our way back to AOL's walled garden?
Rick B.
as Mr Aijt. So why should he say differently? Why should he even address the real issues of Net Neutrality, instead of the strawman issue he creates? Even in the light of evidence that ISPs are already changing their strategies as they salivate over the removal of Net Neutrality requirements, Mr Powell is trying to divert attention away to his bogus issue.
Yes, I do. We had court rulings that permitted ISPs to block BitTorrent (see the results of Comcast v. FCC), ISPs extorting the companies I do business with to deliver the packets their customers had already paid their ISP to deliver to them (which then affects me, since the companies I do business with have to raise their rates to makes up the difference, which ends up impacting me), and ISPs interfering with SSL handshakes to prevent secure connections while simultaneously injecting advertising identifiers (i.e. supercookies) into all of their customer’s traffic.
Ah, the good old times, right? How quickly you forget.
The only good thing back then for me was that the local cable ISP hadn’t yet managed to consolidate their complete control of my region, so their prices were about 40% lower, but that’s a separate issue, sadly, and one that won’t be affected by these changes. Even so, if they decide to misbehave like other ISPs were in 2015, the only choice I’ll have for broadband this time around is “take it or leave it” with the local cable monopoly.
Most Americans have a choice of ISPs. The choice is between Bell (Verizon, AT&T, etc) or Cable.
No, they don't. Most Americans have NO choice for high speed internet. 256kbps DSL from Verizon doesn't count as "high speed"
The open internet where everyone can create, publish and share, even if he can't afford throwing more money than a honest person can make in a lifetime at ISPs, that will be lost.
But then, who needs that, right? As long as we still have Facebook and Instagram and the other bullshit for the masses to keep them entertained, who needs anything else?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This confidence rests on the fact that ISPs highly value the open internet
I had no idea that Michael Powell was a comedic writer.
ISPs highly value the ability to extort content providers that aren't fully owned subsidiaries of the ISP, or aren't other ISPs that can extort their fully owned subsidiary content provider.
ISPs highly value the idea of being able to charge other companies money for access to your eyeballs and ears, while also charging you money for access to content that the ISP doesn't actually own.
What a load of horse shit.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
He was also a terrible FCC chairman, with views not far away from Ajit Pai.
Of course the Internet will continue, new businesses will flourish, etc. with the removal of Net Neutrality. However, it will slowly degrade over time until customers are so fed up with bad performance and availability outages that they will be clamoring for premium packages that miraculously remove all of the delays and outages to certain popular sites.
Powell and Pai are both morons.
I feel like downloading it so we can reupload it in a few months. There's a meme in the making, I can feel it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"This confidence rests on the fact that ISPs highly value the open internet and the principles of net neutrality"
Well there's a huge steaming pile of bullshit if ever I saw one.
If were true (thankfully it's not, but that doesn't mean the situation is good) it would re-enforce my point.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I know it was a small thing, but it was a thing that frustrated me for quite some time:
http://forums.xfinity.com/t5/Stream-TV-App/HBO-Go-on-PlayStation-3-amp-PlayStation-4/td-p/2838840
For a while, Comcast was blocking access to HBO Go on Playstations. They were very clear on that being a business decision. So I paid Comcast, I paid HBO, and I paid Sony, but I wasn't able to use the services I was paying for the way they were intended. A quote from Comcast on the matter:
All - Thanks for your patience while this deal was worked.
As mentioned earlier, we want to bring our content to as many platforms as we can, but these are business deals that need to be negotiated and sometimes it can take time to come to agreeable terms.
In other words, they won't offer the service until someone other than their customer pays them to offer it. This kept going even when we had net neutrality regulations. This jackass thinks it won't happen after getting rid of those regulations? What the hell is wrong with the world lately?
I had no idea Comcast and Verizon have such rabid fans among moderators today.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Technically, the Internet was created for the military (DARPA), who have deep pockets. It was only later that it expanded from the military and the Universities that helped develop the protocols to public use. Not defending the FCC decision by any means, but that's the why of it's creation.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Yes, but I'd prefer to have it writing rather than to trust your crystal ball.
Peace in our time! Says former UK Prime Minster Neville Chamberlain
Then why do it?
Why push so hard and expensively lobby for years and years on end if it's no change at all?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
all we have to do is vote for people who are going to be pro-NN. Yes, this means many of us will have to hold our noses and vote for candidates we otherwise do not like. This is what it means to win in politics. The question is, how bad do you actually want NN?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Lets not forget about Comcast blocking VPNs and Lotus Notes too!
I am sure there will be legal challenges to this and active efforts to make it hard for ISPs to prioritize and throttle traffic. We will not go silently into the night.
What he doesn't apparently get is that while yes, all of those activities will continue to happen. But, now the ISPs will be maximizing profits (as all good businesses should), by increasing prices as much as they believe they can, and coming out with a variety of tiered services that cost more. They'll also be double charging...not just the consumer, but the providers as well, on the same bits.
These are local monopolies, and need to be treated as public utilities. There is NO competition.
Just another day in Paradise
Michael Powell, former FCC Chairman and now current president and CEO of National Cable & Telecommunications Association, claims we shouldn't be concerned at all by the current FCC Chairman's plan to completely abolish all regulatory oversight of the Internet. In other words, fox claims hen house perfectly safe under his supervision.
As to Michael Powell clairvoyance, remember when he claimed there would be more choice once the 1996 Telecommunication act line sharing provisions were repealed? That certainly worked out well for the ILECs increased profits, err "investments".
Micheal Powell has surely become an inspiration for the current chairmain Ajit Pai. I can only imagine how much he is already salivating over his future "Pai Day" once he leaves the public sector and the Washington revolving door richly rewards him for his loyal service.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
He claims everything will be just as great as it is now. So what is the benefit of changing? If the current situation is the best way for ISPs to profit, why have they spent so much money lobbying for repeal? Sounds like another smokescreen to me.
Most Americans have a choice of ISPs. The choice is between Bell (Verizon, AT&T, etc) or Cable.
It is obvious, you dont live in America, or you are a paid shill.
You can not even say "a lot" have a choice. Most have NO CHOICE.
please go troll elsewhere.
Comcast HAS NOT removed promises to uphold Net Neutrality, they have it still up here.
If you got that wrong, I wonder what ELSE you have got wrong...
Like the article says nothing is going to come of this, the internet next year will be essentially the same as it is this year, possibly with a few more options but no reduction in service.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ummm... the "court order" that allowed throttling of BitTorrent was because some BitTorrent users were consuming massive amounts of bandwidth, and Comcast (rightly) argued that they had to manage their network for the 90%+ of users who weren't abusing the system. In 2008 (seven years before the Net Neutrality regulations), they had already come to a compromise with BitTorrent on that. All of the other concerns people bring up were dealt with in 2010, when the transparency rules were in place.
All of the other situations you mention were resolved pre-NN, and were either incredibly rare or very short-lived. Generally, it's usually some mid-level tech guy who comes up with a "great idea," that gets shot down as a bad one once people find out about it.
The "Open Internet" isn't going anywhere, which essentially boils down to him telling the masses that nothing is going to change as far as they are concerned. So then why is so much energy being put into the policy change? In reality They just want more leverage to keep people in certain bubbles without them realizing it. Apparently freedom of discourse is a threat to the establishment.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
It doesn't matter about specific of that one case that got the broad ruling. If anything ISPs would set up more "think of the children" scenarios to get favorable outcomes. The case will be decided by some 70+ year old "series of tubes" judge.
We had court rulings that permitted ISPs to block BitTorrent (see the results of Comcast v. FCC)
Of course, Comcast had already stopped blocking BitTorrent about two years before that ruling, due at least in part to a class-action lawsuit filed in the same general timeframe as the FCC investigation. And who knows what the FTC would have done had Comcast not folded.
It would be awesome if people would open their eyes a bit to the overall system of checks and balances we have in this country and not just declare the only two options to be a state-controlled Internet or the wild wild west.
The service providers (Verizon, ATT, L3,etc) pushed for this because now they have a massively captive corporate office who have been sold on the false song of cloud based workflows.
Once this vote goes through, we may see a massive halt in cloud adoptions as businesses have to reconsider the costs associated with transmission fees.
ARPAnet was the first network in existence that evolved into the Internet (along with England's NPL network, but nevermind that). It was paid for using DoD funds, and intended for government use only, specifically for ARPA projects. So yes, it was for military projects. Memos on the use of the network granted the use of the network for trivial non-commercial messaging purposes, which became email, which became ARPAnet's killer app. It took well over a decade until NSFnet came along, which allowed for broader academic uses. When you say "a small part", you may be thinking of MILNET which was a chunk of ARPAnet that was physically split off for security reasons. At that point, MILnet was reserved for unclassified military purposes and the remainder of ARPAnet continued doing research projects.
I happen to very much enjoy the ability to not jump through sneaky hoops just to tether a device to my phone. The first time I saw that message asking me to pay an extra $15 a month just for the privilege of using my laptop screen instead of my phone screen, it broke my brain. It's a big part of why I went out and bought that Linux phone so I could make it behave how I wanted instead of how the wireless carriers decided they felt like inventing charges for. When the 2015 law went into effect, all that tethering charge bullshit halted.
You have a really low UID, so you're not likely to be a shill--so I'll guess just a useful idiot.
"Throttling specific sites" may not be the number one likely outcome, but "throttling everything but specific sites" is exactly what the ISPs are talking about wanting to do.
Someone had said "They welcome saving money by having to sign up for "content packages""
This was my reply:
Screw content packages.
I want a Dumb. Pipe. ... and I do not want to pay extra for it, because I don't have to at present.
I do tech for a living. If I want to have something on my home network that opens port 6543 on my firewall that if you TCP connect to it it spits out the word "BULLSHIT" 10 times and then disconnects, I want to be able to do that. No one should be able to tell me otherwise. I shouldn't have to subscribe to some "Enthusiast Plan" to do this.
If I want to do VoIP ....
DECNet over IP via Multinet (think OpenVMS)?
Let's play with the VM/370 Sixpack on Hercules and run RSCS over IP ... Sure!
I could go on. My point is - if I'm paying for a connection I want to do whatever I want with it, whenever I desire to do so.
Apologies if this sounds a bit rant-y ... but unless I'm going to save SERIOUS money, I want no part of content packages. My Internet portion of my cable bill is now what, $50/mo? Unless you're dropping that to $10 or $20 a month, I'm not interested in your "packages". Leave my Internet alone, thanks.
Look moron, no one is saying the Internet will self implode, stop existing altogether, or be completely subverted the moment Net Neutrality passes. This bullshit that Pai and gang is trying to pass as truth is not what is at stake here, and anyone trying to pass this impression is apparently lacking the nuance of the message.
It's obvious, given how shrewd ISPs are, that the changes for the worse will get implemented slowly - as they were before.
Remember people, the Internet didn't start out right away with datacaps, tiered plans, crap combos and whatnot that are all out there today that everyone accepted because they had no other option. In fact, americans might not know this, but there are still countries out there with Internet that does not impose datacaps, does not scam you out of your money by making Internet combo packages that you have to pay to get the better value, among other practices.
I'm personally an exception in my country among the few others that have access to the same fiber company, but you see, not only I don't have any datacaps, I also have the same speed for upload and download, I pay for Internet alone (no cable TV, no other crap), and my provider does not spam me with offers of other crap services that are also owned by it.
Much the same will happen with data discrimination once net neutrality falls. It'll get implemented slowly, and at a pace that avoids controversy as much as possible. Like lots of people already theorized and said, it'll probably start as an offer designed to look like you are taking advantage of the situation. The most likely scenario is that you'll be offered a fast lane to services tied to the ISP you are already paying for. Get 4K streaming without stuttering or lag with our streaming channels exclusively! Get unthetered access to services tied to our brand. Get unlimited transfers with our cloud based options. This kinda crap.
And then they start slowly but surely limiting the bandwidth, the caps, and the overall connection to the competition. And when enough people have migrated to their own services and competition died off, they can treat you like shit once again because you don't have an option. This is what always happen. This is what is already happening. It'll just gain another dimension.
It might look like a good deal at first, but it stiffles competition and it actively diverts people into walled gardens situation, which is specially bad given the current state on how people use the Internet, and how much critical reasoning is expected from regular users.
You are fooling no one with that sorta crap Powell.
Umm...Everyone has mentioned title II. The exact topic is Pai's intent to declare that ISPs are not subject to Title II; which is ridiculous as it clearly should be.
That is how it has worked for a long time - some people have basement servers, especially small startups and hobbyists.
Only for those hobbyists who can afford the upgrade from home Internet, whose acceptable use policy bans even light-traffic servers and/or which is behind carrier-grade NAT in many countries, to business Internet, which allows servers and offers a static IPv4 address. (ISPs in some countries skip the intermediate "dynamic but mostly stable IP address" state that US ISP Xfinity by Comcast is known for.) Customers behind carrier-grade NAT can run a basement server, but it'll be accessible only through the customer's LAN, not through the Internet, because carrier-grade NAT doesn't allow receiving TCP connections.
Or is an IPv6-only website viable in fourth quarter 2017?
First, no ISP ever offers a 100mbs connection. They offer an "up to" 100mbs connection because they oversell their infrastructure and use some legalese to cover for inferior performance in peak usage times.
Which only encourages ISPs to define "peak usage times" as 5 AM to 1 AM in order to allow the network to run saturated instead of improving it. Comcast, for example, was caught saturating its Tata link most of the time seven years ago.
They removed "Comcast doesn't prioritize Internet traffic or create paid fast lanes."
Which is irrelevant to Net Neutrality.
Did NN mean an ISP could not prioritize traffic? No.
Did NN mean no paid fast lanes, if the not paying did not slow down service? No.
NN was a unicorn, it was only ever what people thought and not what it actually was.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Guess what, even Comcast needs subscribers to run and without them there is no business left.
Comcast is widely regarded as the most hated company in America. They are still in business because many of their subscribers have no other option.
Title II of the communications act is only around 100 pages. And it is agreed that a large portion of it does not apply to ISPs, so it can be ignored. So I urge everyone to go read it and find out just how restrictive it...isn't. Then decide for yourself if it sounds like the Internet should be treated more like the telephone service is treated, or if it should be treated more like how cable is allowed to misbehave. The latter just doesn't apply to what ISPs provide, what we want them to provide, and what they should continue to provide: access to the Internet. If they tack on DNS, or a Usenet server, or caching, or an included email account, that's all well and good, but that's not what we care about, that's not why we subscribe.
This was fine 20 years ago when we were dialup. It does not apply in the era of pro-Monopoly. They can make more money selling us busted internet becauae many of us have no other options.
I'm sorry if some people only have one ISP to choose from, but it is a local governance issue. Your local government should be able to solve this, either by paying for their own wires or allowing competition. It is not the federal government that is granting monopolies on your internet access.
I'm guessing you're responding broadly to points like mine, rather than to mine specifically, since you're responding to things that I didn't actually say. Even so, those are good points, even if they aren't exactly in response to the things I said.
For instance, I cited the court ruling, not the behavior itself. The problem isn't the particular instance of bad behavior Comcast was engaging in, since as you pointed out, it was resolved years earlier. The problem is the precedent it created. When the Bush-era FCC reclassified cable and then DSL and dial-up ISPs under Title I (in 2002 and 2005, respectively), effectively deregulating them, they issued policy statements making it clear they had ancillary jurisdiction to continue enforcing the open Internet, which served as a discouragement against disreputable companies engaging in bad behavior. Following Comcast's bad behavior in 2008, the 2010 ruling stated that the FCC was incorrect in its legal analysis and that they lacked the authority to enforce neutrality with the current rules they had in place, essentially opening a massive hole in policy that was never intended by any administration.
Obama's FCC moved to quickly close the loopholes exposed in that case, and you can trace a straight line from that case to the 2011 policy changes to the 2014 Verizon v. FCC case that partially struck them down to the 2015 Title II reclassification that re-established the FCC's authority to enforce neutrality (at the cost of heavier regulation), each of which was in response to the previous event. Because of the ongoing legal wrangling, none of the companies involved made major moves to take advantage of the loopholes, given that it was shaky ground that they knew could disappear at any moment. The FCC's continued action was a check against the misdeeds of the ISPs.
But the situation is very different today. That check is gone. The FCC of today is actively working to open holes that were never intended to exist, despite bipartisan attempts by the three previous administrations to keep them closed (some through regulation, others through policy, but all in an attempt to protect neutrality). And in contrast with the previous deregulation that didn't immediately lead to problems, today's FCC is sending strong signals that are encouraging companies to leverage the holes the FCC is creating. As such, I expect the companies to take full advantage of the holes as they resume the worst of the behaviors we were seeing tested prior to 2015. They'll give it a few months before doing so, of course, that way we don't all cry foul, but I'm calling it now: we'll be seeing shenanigans again within a year.
As for the false dichotomy that you point out, I quite agree with you that there are more options available. In fact, I'm convinced that deregulation is the ideal way to go when it comes to this stuff, but not at this moment. Were the market in a healthy condition, I'd agree that there are sufficient checks and balances in place to (generally) ensure good behavior, but with the state of the market as it is (i.e. regional monopolies have stripped the ability for Americans to vote with their wallet) and with companies already demonstrating an ability to circumvent the checks you mentioned (e.g. rather than going after customers who complain loudly and might file costly class action suits, target Netflix and other content providers who do business with your customers), I feel that there is simply no choice but to maintain the existing regulations until the market is once again healthy.
That's why they call it the sticks.
Y2K didn't become a disaster because the problem was recognized and a shitload of work happened to verify that it wasn't a problem, and where it would be a problem, mitigation strategies, software patches and other work happened. I don't know where this guy was or if he's got a shitty memory, but we certainly devoted a pile of time and resources to it, both for our internal systems (applying patches to all systems, checking/updating critical software) as well as the software we ship.
I'm also all for rational discussion, rational plans, rational regulations and a rational free market. The broadband market in the US lags the rest of the world. Why does it do that? What could we learn from other developed countries? Why are people in rural areas underserved? Why in the world's largest capitalist economy do about half the people have no choice when it comes to their ISP? Why can't cities and municipalities build out not-for-profit networks? Why so much secrecy with comment data, fake comments and the like? Why are you ignoring what is probably the most commented upon FCC rules change ever? These are all facts and rational questions, but the response from Ajit Pai isn't one that shows vision, clear thinking, respect for the facts or any kind of leadership whatsoever. It can best be described as putting his fingers in his ears and shouting LALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU like a three year old who got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. That's why there's no rational discussion -- you can only talk to a blank wall for so long without being frustrated.
You clearly follow this stuff pretty closely. I've frankly not run into many people on the other side of the NN debate that seem to want to do much beyond swilling beer and extolling the virtues of "freedom" through increased governmental regulation. Though I suspect ultimately we're not going to see eye to eye on everything, I appreciate you taking the time to discuss. A couple of thoughts/questions:
Following Comcast's bad behavior in 2008, the 2010 ruling stated that the FCC was incorrect in its legal analysis and that they lacked the authority to enforce neutrality with the current rules they had in place, essentially opening a massive hole in policy that was never intended by any administration.
Congress has had seven years, under two different administrations and under control of both parties (four of those years prior to Wheeler's NN rules), to legislatively change that. They didn't. IMO that facially makes "never intended" a bit thin. Do you have more specifics on why they took no action on this if it was so blazingly contrary to what they wanted?
The FCC of today is actively working to open holes that were never intended to exist, despite bipartisan attempts by the three previous administrations to keep them closed
Help me out with that. As I understand it, Pai is replacing Wheeler's set of regulations with another set of regulations. How is that not at a minimum equally restrictive as what existed pre-Wheeler? What holes is today's FCC actively trying to open?
Were the market in a healthy condition, I'd agree that there are sufficient checks and balances in place to (generally) ensure good behavior, but with the state of the market as it is . . . I feel that there is simply no choice but to maintain the existing regulations until the market is once again healthy.
I'm guessing you're not suggesting that the regulations in and of themselves will make the market inherently "healthy" again, since you're predicting Bad Things within a year of them being removed. And if you're talking about the market somehow improving itself over time through competitive behavior, there seems little opportunity for that when any new entrants would be forced to adopt exactly the same model as the incumbents. How do you see this coming about?
Bullshit is Michael Powell's stock in trade. He was a lousy FCC chair (the Stupor Bowl "wardrobe malfunction" happened on his watch), and he's a lousy pundit.
His reference to Y2K - which wasn't a disaster because a huge amount of remediation work was done ahead of the deadline - is evidence enough of that. But as many others have pointed out, this entire piece is crap. It's Powell's usual bread (shopping!), circus (social media!), and pandering to traditional Republican constituencies (small-government types in this case).
Though I suspect ultimately we're not going to see eye to eye on everything, I appreciate you taking the time to discuss.
Likewise! I always appreciate thoughtful responses, even if I may disagree with them. Also, I'll apologize in advance for my lack of brevity.
Congress has had seven years, under two different administrations and under control of both parties (four of those years prior to Wheeler's NN rules), to legislatively change that. They didn't. IMO that facially makes "never intended" a bit thin. Do you have more specifics on why they took no action on this if it was so blazingly contrary to what they wanted?
It's a few different things, the first of which is that people simply didn't see the need to legislate it. As I mentioned, everyone (including the FCC) seemed to think that the FCC already had the authority back when Bush deregulated ISPs, so there wasn't any perceived reason whatsoever to legislate the issue prior to the 2010 ruling. And even after that ruling, the FCC moved very quickly to update their policies to something they thought wouldn't run afoul of the law.
Second, legislating it was viewed as both an extreme approach and one that was unlikely to succeed. It wasn't until the 2014 ruling that attitudes began to shift and that legislation finally entered the discussion, but Congress had started its ongoing, bipartisan deadlock by then and legislation was seen as an inflexible approach that was poorly-suited to keep up with a rapidly changing field. While Title II was by no means an ideal choice, it was certainly better than legislation.
(Third, I'll point out is that I referred to administrations. Congress hasn't meaningfully legislated this topic in at least two decades, so it's a bit hard to say what Congress would have intended. Instead, they generally leave these sorts of issues to commissions and agencies under the control of the President, hence why I relegated my comments regarding intent to Presidential administrations.)
Unfortunately, that's when the worst thing that has probably ever happened to Net Neutrality took place: Obama publicly endorsed it.
Practically overnight it became a partisan issue. What had previously been a quiet, bipartisan issue that boiled down to consumer interests vs. ISP interests suddenly turned into a partisan issue dividing Democrats and Republicans. As a registered Republican from a family of Republicans who's been following this topic for years, it was a shock to me when my dad was suddenly both aware of "Net Neutrality" and was referring to it as "Obamacare for the Internet".
Help me out with that. As I understand it, Pai is replacing Wheeler's set of regulations with another set of regulations. How is that not at a minimum equally restrictive as what existed pre-Wheeler? What holes is today's FCC actively trying to open?
Yes and no. From a legal perspective, yes, the FCC is roughly back to where it was before (i.e. incapable of legally enforcing neutrality). Practically, however, the situations couldn't be more different.
To draw an analogy, imagine you (FCC chairman from 2005-2016) are coaching basketball and your team (the FCC) is using a zone defense (Title II) to great effect in protecting your basket (net neutrality). Seemingly everyone agrees that zone defense is boring to watch and stifles gameplay (i.e. it's heavy regulation), so you voluntarily switch to man-on-man coverage (Title I) while using new techniques you've invented (policy statements). Some people doubt they will work, but sure enough these new techniques prove to be just as effective at protecting your team's basket, while also being more fun to watch. Later, some teams (ISPs) complain that your new techniques skirt the rules. After a few rounds of a back-and-forth, the ruling body tells you that half your techniques (the half that were useful) are actually against the rules, so you go back to boring, old zone defense to p