Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality
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@masonwheeler What, a whole bunch of actions that were illegal anyway?
The potential is there, but it hasn't happened yet.
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@masonwheeler Then maybe, just maybe, a real solution will be found. What happened in 2015 is very much not the solution.
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@erufael said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@masonwheeler Then maybe, just maybe, a real solution will be found. What happened in 2015 is very much not the solution.
When is the best time to find a good solution:
- Before removing the hack that is the only thing keeping the entire system from collapsing
- After removing the hack that is the only thing keeping the entire system from collapsing
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@erufael said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@ben_lubar Because users don't really know what any of this means thanks to the massive hype from Reddit and the media. That one's easy.
This theory doesn't explain why the people who definitively do know are just as strongly against the FCC's plan.
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@ben_lubar I never said that this whole thing isn't a massive clusterfuck; it is. But we already have tools that can be used to deal with problems (anti-trust and anti-competitive regulations via the FTC), so let's maybe use those first. If there are still problems that need to be addressed, then Congress can pass legislation to deal with it. That's what both of those are there for.
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@erufael said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@the_quiet_one Wouldn't most if not all of that be covered by FTC regulations?
No. The FTC doesn't have the authority to make regulations.
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@ben_lubar The first one doesn't happen, unfortunately. So let's wait for it to collapse, and the FCC will go holy shit let's get this regulated quick.
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@masonwheeler Then go yell at Congress.
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@pie_flavor said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@ben_lubar The first one doesn't happen, unfortunately. So let's wait for it to collapse, and the FCC will go holy shit let's get this regulated quick.
The first one doesn't happen because we removed the hack that is the only thing keeping the entire system from collapsing before we tried to find a solution.
This would be like if Michelle Obama promoted healthy eating by starving school children and then yelling at their parents that it's their fault for not feeding them vegetables.
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@erufael said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@ben_lubar I never said that this whole thing isn't a massive clusterfuck; it is. But we already have tools that can be used to deal with problems (anti-trust and anti-competitive regulations via the FTC), so let's maybe use those first. If there are still problems that need to be addressed, then Congress can pass legislation to deal with it. That's what both of those are there for.
I'd love to. Just tell me what it takes to get them to do their job and actually enforce them.
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@the_quiet_one Believe me, I want to know the answer to that one, too. :/
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Also, not gonna go back up and find the right posts to quote, but vis-a-vis the "AT&T is a Title I or Title II company" point/question/debate:
AT&T sells telephone service, which is a Title II regulated service. Among other things, Title II means (as taken from the FCC's benevolent announcement of which parts of the law they would ignore while they were ignoring the law and unilaterally reclassifying Internet service, as quoted at the Daily Dot):
- "Tariffing and rate regulation" - the government controls what rates they can charge for defined services, and they can't offer any services for which there isn't a tariff.
- "[Forced] unbundling of last-mile facilities" - the government mandates that AT&T lets anyone come in and use AT&T's infrastructure for a fixed wholesale rate that's significantly lower than the tariffed service rate. Meaning AT&T pays to build the copper line, and then someone else comes in and takes their customers, significantly reducing the value of those copper lines to AT&T. Between 1&2, that's why AT&T, Verizon, and basically all copper line providers to not do any more repairs or upgrades to the copper line infrastructure than strictly required to not get sued for failure to provide service.
- "Cost accounting rules" - the government sets additional, restrictive rules on how the telcos can depreciate the equipment expenditure that makes up a staggering amount of their total budget. The accounting rules are so restrictive that it's not uncommon for a telco to be still depreciating equipment that has been out of service for two generations worth of equipment (e.g., equipment that has been replaced & upgraded twice is still being carried on their books as an asset, and they've been paying higher taxes than a company in a field with more appropriately set depreciation rules does, as they cannot expense their equipment within its useful life span).
AT&T also sells Internet service, which is a Title I regulated service, which doesn't have any of those restrictions. Meaning:
- AT&T can invent and sell related services at any time they feel is worthwhile, thus winning the market value of being the first mover in a market.
- AT&T can expense most of their equipment & infrastructure investments under Section 529 bonus depreciation rules, or can at least depreciate it under MACRS if they spend more than what qualifies for instant expensing as bonus depreciation. MACRS rules for computer equipment typically falls into a 3 or 5 year useful life span rule - MACRS 3 would allow for depreciating over 80% of the value in the first partial year + full year of service for the item; MACRS 5 is about 60% in that first full year+.
- AT&T can invest in their network without worrying about being compelled to subsidize their competitors. In the business world, more profitable investments, like squeaky wheels, tend to get the grease.
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@izzion said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
- AT&T can invent and sell related services at any time they feel is worthwhile, thus winning the market value of being the first mover in a market.
This is the one people are objecting to. It wouldn't make sense to have a law that says your water or electricity company can "add new features", so why does it make sense that an internet company can? Internet is a utility just like any other "pipe" that comes into or out of your house.
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@erufael Believe me. As much as I'm a huge supporter of net neutrality, that 2014 decision made me throw up in my mouth. It was horrible news because I hated the idea of making ISPs Title II. For me it came down to choosing the lesser of two evils, and I considered Title II to be just that: A shitty compromise.
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@ben_lubar
Without the new features, we wouldn't have- VOIP
- Twitch/YouTube/HBO GO
- Online Games
- Cloud Computing
Because either ISPs would not have pursued the infrastructure investments that backed them, or they would still be waiting for government approval of the appropriate tariffs for the services.
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@erufael said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@ben_lubar I never said that this whole thing isn't a massive clusterfuck; it is. But we already have tools that can be used to deal with problems (anti-trust and anti-competitive regulations via the FTC), so let's maybe use those first.
Antitrust won't solve the underlying problem here, which is that telecommunications service is a classic natural monopoly due to the infrastructure required. The classic solution to such issues--the one that actually works, at least--is to treat them as common carrier utilities, which is what Title II covers.
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@izzion said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@ben_lubar
Without the new features, we wouldn't have- VOIP
- Twitch/YouTube/HBO GO
- Online Games
- Cloud Computing
Yes, that must be why companies in all four of those categories are against the repeal of Net Neutrality. It must be because "wire that carries information in UDP/TCP/IP formats" is a technology that was invented specifically to allow me to play video games and could not have been done with the internet without adding special "faster" packages that somehow appear just as my internet speed mysteriously decreases.
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@erufael said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@masonwheeler Then go yell at Congress.
Yes, that's going on too. But Congress takes forever to accomplish things, and NN violations have been a problem for a decade already now. It's idiotic to take down a working solution before the even better replacement is in place.
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@masonwheeler said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
It's idiotic to take down a working solution before the even better replacement is in place.
You say that, but the "it's idiotic" argument hasn't worked especially well on the current administration the other handful of times they've tried to repeal things they disliked before thinking of a replacement.
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@ben_lubar Just ignore Izzion. He is (or used to be) in the ISP industry, and has Sinclair's Law problems up to his neck on this particular issue.
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@izzion said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
ISPs would not have pursued the infrastructure investments
Yeah, it's too bad all those ISPs are guilty of lying to their shareholders (who it is actually illegal to lie to):
Title II hasn’t hurt network investment, according to the ISPs themselves
ISPs continue to invest and tell investors that net neutrality hasn't hurt them.
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@masonwheeler
Because God forbid that someone who has experience working with Title II regulation, and who has seen how three small rural telephone companies in Middle of Nowhere, Midwest, had to employ two full time staff members each just to deal with the paperwork and regulatory compliance those regulations imposed, share that experiential knowledge.Or who has sat in on meetings where the explicit decision to pursue a policy of only providing the absolute minimum service required to keep the government from giving away taxpayer money (the Universal Service Fee you pay on your phone bill) to finance a competitor, since spending any more than that to upgrade Title II regulated infrastructure just meant that the telephone company was financing their competitor themselves.
Or who has had to tell potential customers they couldn't have the service they wanted because it didn't fit within our tariffed product offerings, and we didn't have an estimate of when the tariff would be approved.
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@ben_lubar
Federal government imposes new regulation, infrastructure investment that has a 12+ month lead time doesn't dip in first 12 months after regulation. News at 11.
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@izzion said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@ben_lubar
Federal government imposes new regulation, infrastructure investment that has a 12+ month lead time doesn't dip in first 12 months after regulation. News at 11.Ok, it's almost 2018 now. I assume that means that the 2015 policy change that was in response to the courts saying "you need to change this policy if you want things to stay the same" should have been affecting infrastructure investment for quite some time, right?
Why haven't any of the big phone companies complained about this? Oh right, because they're not changing their infrastructure spending plans.
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@ben_lubar
Or because the election of a more business friendly administration gave them confidence that the regulation either wouldn't be defended in court, or would be repealed, so they went ahead and resumed their infrastructure spending plans.
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@izzion said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@masonwheeler
Because God forbid that someone who has experience working with Title II regulation, and who has seen how three small rural telephone companies in Middle of Nowhere, Midwest, had to employ two full time staff members each just to deal with the paperwork and regulatory compliance those regulations imposed, share that experiential knowledge.Or who has sat in on meetings where the explicit decision to pursue a policy of only providing the absolute minimum service required to keep the government from giving away taxpayer money (the Universal Service Fee you pay on your phone bill) to finance a competitor, since spending any more than that to upgrade Title II regulated infrastructure just meant that the telephone company was financing their competitor themselves.
Or who has had to tell potential customers they couldn't have the service they wanted because it didn't fit within our tariffed product offerings, and we didn't have an estimate of when the tariff would be approved.
Well, considering that dozens of small ISPs have written and spoken out in favor of net neutrality, and have said, in so many words, that there is literally nothing burdensome or onerous about the regulations unless you are specifically trying to screw your customers over, I can only assume one of four things is true. In no particular order:
- You're making stuff up.
- Your employer was engaged in exactly the sort of predatory behavior that 80+% of the country believes--with good reason--should be illegal.
- You're incorrectly conflating different things in your argument.
- The people you were working with were badly incompetent.
Not sure which it is, but one of those has to be true.
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@masonwheeler
Or
5. The small ISPs don't have telco experience to know what Title II really means.
6. The small ISPs believe the government will continue with Forebearance indefinitely.
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@izzion said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@masonwheeler
Or
5. The small ISPs don't have telco experience to know what Title II really means.
6. The small ISPs believe the government will continue with Forebearance indefinitely.So between these two choices, you feel like there's enough of a reason to go with the first rather than the second?
- Throw away legislation designed to protect consumers because it might theoretically also affect businesses in some way that hasn't been claimed by the businesses it apparently affects
- Use the legislative process to draft new legislation designed to ease the burden on small ISPs while still protecting consumers from censorship and exploitation
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@izzion said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@masonwheeler
Or
5. The small ISPs don't have telco experience to know what Title II really means.
6. The small ISPs believe the government will continue with Forebearance indefinitely.6 is quite reasonable, as the forbearance was a legally binding part of the Open Internet order. You always seem to treat it as if it's just some whim that they could change at the drop of a hat, but that's not true in any way.
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@masonwheeler
Well, given that the OIO already proved that the FCC thought they had the right to change the legal classifications of an entity at a whim, while ignoring black letter law about the meanings of those classifications, I think it's perfectly reasonable to presume that if the FCC's illegal order were upheld they might proceed with changing the rules further.@ben_lubar
The Pai FCC didn't throw away legislation. They threw away an illegally imposed regulation. Thus saving us money by mooting pending court cases that would have cost money to litigate.
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@masonwheeler There's black letter law that such offers of forbearance are not legally binding--there is no right to sue the government to compel them to refrain from enforcing a valid law. In the words of someone famous,
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@izzion said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@masonwheeler
Well, given that the OIO already proved that the FCC thought they had the right to change the legal classifications of an entity at a whim, while ignoring black letter law about the meanings of those classifications, I think it's perfectly reasonable to presume that if the FCC's illegal order were upheld they might proceed with changing the rules further.
They changed the classification because the courts explicitly told them that they were, in fact, able to reclassify ISPs under Title II and that that was the only way to make net neutrality regulations stick. And then the big ISPs went ballistic and sued over it, and it was upheld in court. You are inventing whims where none exist.
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@adynathos said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
USA will plunge into the dark ages and we in Europe will be on the forefront of technology :P
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@masonwheeler
From the text of the 2014 Verizon v FCC court decision you reference, as linked in the previous Daily Dot article I linked:It was against this background that Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Tracking the Computer II distinction between basic and enhanced services, the Act defines two categories of entities: telecommunications carriers, which provide the equivalent of basic services, and information-service providers, which provide the equivalent of enhanced services. The Act subjects telecommunications carriers, but not information-service providers, to Title II common carrier regulation.
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@izzion So, unpacking this a bit:
An information service is a website: it provides information. A communications service is what lets me communicate with the website. It doesn't provide its own information; it ferries information back and forth between me and the information service.
Therefore, websites are not Title II common carriers, and ISPs are. That makes perfect sense. Trying to change that to not be the case doesn't make sense.
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@ben_lubar said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@boomzilla said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@ben_lubar said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@boomzilla If net neutrality wasn't a big deal, why would basically everyone who isn't being paid by an ISP be against its repeal?
Are you saying that they're going to send me a check? Sweeeet.
Also, as I said around here somewhere: "A country full of idiots." Or anyways, a lot of low information people and a lot of conspiratorial people.
I assume that means that companies like Netflix, Microsoft, Amazon, and all of these are run by idiots too?
Well, Netflix did produce "Bill Nye Saves the World", and MS came up with that whole Metro thing...
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@masonwheeler
So, the whole fact that ISP stands for "Information Service Provider", that just gets handwaved away because "what difference does it make at this point anyway". Apple.
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@izzion said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
ISP stands for "Information Service Provider"
Now you're definitely just making stuff up! I have never in my life heard that. It has always been "Internet Service Provider."
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@izzion said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
ISP stands for "Information Service Provider"
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@masonwheeler said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@izzion said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
ISP stands for "Information Service Provider"
Now you're definitely just making stuff up! I have never in my life heard that. It has always been "Internet Service Provider."
Does @izzion seriously not know the name of the industry he is supposedly involved with?
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@masonwheeler
You're right, sorry. Got myself excised and my eyes and fingers just slipped up. My mistake.
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@boomzilla said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@ben_lubar said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@boomzilla said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
It's making all the right people angry.
"I lost my job, my healthcare, and my house was taken through eminent domain, but some people on the internet are angry about internet things, so I'm happy."
Well, Net Neutrality killed my children so it had to go.
They were born dead anyway, since it was inevitable they'd each touch your lawn at one point or another, being kids and whatnot.
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@pie_flavor said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@ben_lubar said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
The reason ISPs are classified as Title II in the first place is that the FCC was told by a court that Net Neutrality is only enforceable if they classify ISPs as Title II.
Which means that ISPs are being classed as telcos.
This is broken and stupid and wrong.
We should write new laws to properly govern the modern world, not shoehorn modern concepts into old unrelated law sets.Haven't bothered to read the whole thread yet, but my understanding is that they were classified as common carriers, which is not something specific to telephony. Additionally, the relevant laws are the Communications Act of 1934 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996. And to be clear, "telecommunication" means
the transmission of signs, signals, messages, words, writings, images and sounds or information of any nature by wire, radio, optical or other electromagnetic systems.[1][2] Telecommunication occurs when the exchange of information between communication participants includes the use of technology. It is transmitted either electrically over physical media, such as cables, or via electromagnetic radiation.
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A level-headed take on the situation:
George Carlin taught me that one of the FCC’s primary functions is to regulate media content and I’d rather not have the FCC anywhere near internet content.
:smiling_face_with_open_mouth_closed_eyes:
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Without even going into anything else about this whole thing, I'm confused about the classification battle. While I'm not in the US, let's assume I am for the following situation:
My internet connection is currently ADSL. I buy that service from a telco. However, I don't have a VoIP line (there are almost no POTS lines available anyway, certainly not at my location, so it has to be VoIP) rented from them. No phone number associated with my contract, nothing.
So, they are clearly an ISP in my case and nothing more. So does that mean only whatever rules apply to ISPs would apply to the contract between me and them? But, I can decide to pay extra 50 Moonlandian Currency a month to get a VoIP line at literally any point in time. Does that mean that after that point they are a telco, when considering my contract with me?
Not to mention I can use the connection I have now to make VoIP calls as much as I want, I just don't have access to their exchange and I have to either make a contract with another telco or any of myriad online VoIP services. Does that mean that that bit of communication is governed by different rules than the
PornhubYouTube video I'm currently watching? I'm also running both through SSL, so there's no way for them to know which traffic is which anyway.The whole attempt to make a distinction is stupid, IMHO. Maybe 10 years ago it would make sense, or maybe you guys in the US still use POTS primarily for phone communication, but to me this is all confusing as all shit because I can't see how you can properly separate the two.
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@izzion said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
Or who has sat in on meetings where the explicit decision to pursue a policy of only providing the absolute minimum service required to keep the government from giving away taxpayer money (the Universal Service Fee you pay on your phone bill) to finance a competitor, since spending any more than that to upgrade Title II regulated infrastructure just meant that the telephone company was financing their competitor themselves.
You mean you're keeping your internet service shitty to avoid it being being used to kill your obsolete telephone offering. And without NN you would just block VOIP instead, right?
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@pie_flavor said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@ben_lubar Man, just when I was glad I could agree with someone here, you go and post something retarded.
Correct, that's an example. The provided example depicts a telephone provider deciding you get 10GB extra to spend on certain websites. It does not block those sites in any way (because, as part of the EU, they do have net neutrality).It's still an issue because it usually gives an advantage to the big guys.
For example, T-Mobile in Germany has this "Binge On" feature which makes you pay 5€ more and then, if you choose video, providers like Netflix are exempt from traffic. T-Mobile also said that other services could sign up for this for free, in principle.
Well, Vimeo took a look at signing up and declined because T-Mobile had some demands on what the service had to provide in order to qualify. Thus a sign-up was not for free because they would have to get new hardware, get someone to work on compliance on their end and so on and so forth.
And that's just for one provider. In essence, it's anti-competitive and gives an advantage to the big guys.
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@ben_lubar said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
@boomzilla said in Benefits of the repeal of Net Neutrality:
So the current action wouldn't have happened because the 2015 action was illegal.
The current action did happen, so are you saying that the FCC broke the law for literally no reason just to annoy liberals?
So your theory is that following the law is breaking the law?
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Net Neutrality Isn't Neutral At All
