FCC's Own Chief Technology Officer Warned About Net Neutrality Repeal (politico.com)

Margaret Harding McGill, reporting for Politico: The Federal Communications Commission's own chief technology officer expressed concern Wednesday about Republican Chairman Ajit Pai's plan to repeal the net neutrality rules, saying it could lead to practices that are "not in the public interest." In an internal email to all of the FCC commissioner offices, CTO Eric Burger, who was appointed by Pai in October, said the No. 1 issue with the repeal is concern that internet service providers will block or throttle specific websites, according to FCC sources who viewed the message. "Unfortunately, I realize we do not address that at all," Burger said in the email. "If the ISP is transparent about blocking legal content, there is nothing the [Federal Trade Commission] can do about it unless the FTC determines it was done for anti-competitive reasons. Allowing such blocking is not in the public interest."

Comments

What me worry?

[Ol Olsoc]

The repeal of Net Neutrality will work great.

Just like Trickle Down Theory.

Until this administration

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

I had never seen such single mindedness "my mind is made up don't confuse me with the facts" behaviour from US politicians.
I realize it's a popular opinion to assume Pai has been bought and sold but it continually surprises me no one in gov't has launched an investigation into his ties yet.
Sane people are simply not this zealous...

Re:Until this administration

[Baron_Yam]

>I had never seen such single mindedness "my mind is made up don't confuse me with the facts" behaviour from US politicians.

This isn't ignorance, but deliberate lying. They know what will happen, it just happens to be in alignment with their desires.

This is what happens when you put a fox in charge of the hen house. When a bunch of rich people obviously want to reduce the impediments to getting richer and have a history of making moves in that direction, it's probably a bad idea to take them at their word when they say they're going to help you out at their expense.

Re:I Thought The Sky Was Falling?

[Sarten-X]

since blocking/throttling/etc is purely anti-competitive

Be careful with that line of thought.

"Anti-competitive" has very specific legal meaning, usually requiring that the behavior benefit the actor in some way. However, exclusive-access deals are not often seen as anti-competitive, since any other company could have made a better bid for access.

As an example, let's say that an ISP launches their own video-streaming service, and it's the only one that gets full bandwidth, while Netflix and Hulu and throttled. That's an easy case for anti-competitive behavior.

However, rather than launching their own service, they can open up bidding to be the "exclusive streaming video provider" for their network, and allow Netflix and Hulu (and everyone else, including the tiny little startup with no budget) to bid for that exclusive contract. In the end, the ISP still makes millions of dollars for throttling video, and the consumers still have very little option to move to other ISPs. Even discounting municipal monopolies (which are themselves just exclusive contracts), every other ISP is free to enact the same cash-grab policies.

Do note that in that context, it's easy to argue that since the startup and the major players are competing for the same contract, it's actually pro-competition! It's not discriminating against small companies; it's providing them an opportunity to win a business partnership for a growth opportunity! Of course, the little startup has no real chance to match the bid of the established companies, but to those who like this plan, that's just an indication that the small streaming service should grow more first, perhaps by competing for exclusivity with a smaller ISP for which the big players won't pay as much.

This scenario is a direct parallel to how a brick-and-mortar business grows, by getting local contracts near the company's physical home, that probably won't be noticed by the industry's major players, and probably isn't worth sending a sales rep out for. On the Internet, though, everything is global. The big players can afford to bid on every single opportunity, so a small stream service will likely never find a open niche for growth.