
FCC chair wants to replace net neutrality with "voluntary" commitments - niftich
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/fcc-chair-wants-to-replace-net-neutrality-with-voluntary-commitments/
======
avehn
The regulations were put in place because ISPs were not voluntarily
cooperating with net neutrality. The FCC chair appears to be either unaware of
history or practicing wishful thinking.

~~~
wcarron
Normally, the quote goes "never attribute to malice what can be assigned to
stupidity" or something along those lines. But Pai is a categorical, shit
eating politician. And in the case of politicians, "never attribute to
stupidity what can be attributed to malice".

This is a willful dismantling of consumer protections for political or
financial gain.

Edit: typo

~~~
John23832
> Normally, the quote goes "never attribute to malice what can be assigned to
> stupidity" or something along those lines.

I always like to respond to that quote with another one. I think it fits our
current governmental situation particularly.

"Which is more culpable: stupidity or malice?"

------
thomastjeffery
> the FCC net neutrality order "imposes intrusive government regulations that
> won’t work to solve a problem that doesn’t exist using legal authority the
> FCC doesn’t have."

That is an outright lie. Actually, _four_ of them in _one_ sentence! .. Ok,
the "intrusive government regulations" part is arguable (at best), but they
_do_ work, and they _do_ solve a problem _that exists_ , and, by definition,
they _do_ have the authority (these rules clearly give it).

> The net neutrality order also required ISPs to make more specific public
> disclosures about prices, fees, and data caps.

What is wrong with that, exactly? Do customers not need to know prices? Is it
not literally fraudulent to not give this information?

------
niftich
Related (from yesterday):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14057164](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14057164)

This Ars Technica article provides additional context vs. the Reuters article
on the history of net neutrality in the FCC and the current chair's past
statements when he was a commissioner; as well as additional context on the
implications of FCC vs. FTC enforcement.

------
vorotato
That's because he's a corporate shill. Corps need to keep their dirty fingers
out of politics. Gov't has already restricted consumer choice with ISPs and
now they want to use that lack of choice to punish us. It's really messed up,
and there's no actual way for consumers to go somewhere else. I hope all the
major US ISPs get sued into oblivion for anti-trust violations.

------
coldcode
Can we pay taxes voluntarily? Equally likely to work.

------
wavefunction
'Voluntary commitments' is not only a paradox but has turned this unfortunate
policy push into a ridiculous farce.

Especially since that's the default situation under this new anti-net-
neutrality push by the GOP anyways.

------
pottersbasilisk
if net neutrality fails would google become an isp then?

~~~
takeda
No, it's really hard hard to become a new ISP, and actually Google is a
perfect example. They have tons of money to pull it off, yet even they are
giving up on it (they are no longer expanding to other places).

What is happening is that they pull to a city, and offer attractive deals, as
soon as they do companies like Time Warner will adapt and match their price
and speed, but only in the region that Google get, every other customer in
another region is still being f*cked as usual.

The regional ISPs can actually provide service even at a loss, because they
are available in different regions so they can use money from other regions to
subsidize losses in the specific one they want to eliminate the competition.

I think at this point best deal for us is if a cities would start providing
ISP services, and some are trying to do just that, but unfortunately existing
ISPs fighting tooth and nail with this by suing every city that is trying to
do that.

So, no, nothing can easily replace existing ISPs and they know it. Currently a
lot of regulation is needed because there's no competition possible, otherwise
ISPs are free to do whatever they want, because who you're going to switch to
if you're fed up with them?

~~~
dv_dt
Yup, ask yourself, why aren't there multiple water and sewer providers to
homes? It doesn't work economically to supply a competitive market for certain
services - physically doubling sets of pipes to end customers just don't work,
regardless if they carry water or data. Just saying "the market will provide a
fix" in situations like this is a shallow analysis of the problem.

------
devoply
I promise I won't make more money. I promise, my word is my bond.

------
pitaj
Everyone here is so cynical, saying he's in the pocket of telecoms. Maybe he
is.

But maybe he's just ideologically opposed to these rules being implemented by
a regulatory bureaucracy on the federal level.

~~~
dv_dt
He can be ideologically opposed to rules, but he is also blatantly ignoring
information regarding lack of competition for last mile broadband customers,
and without that, consumers have no market method of counterbalancing
corporate overreach.

Of he offered more of a structural remedy, or something, anything that
actually addressed lack of last-mile competition I would be willing be less
cynical about him.

~~~
prasadjoglekar
His structural remedy is to remove government from the mix and let the market
dictate the price of bandwidth. One thought is that the last-mile problem
becomes irrelevant when mobile providers are offering high-speed internet.

Whether you agree with that sentiment is largely dependent on how you view the
world.

~~~
dv_dt
The wireless provisioning of bandwidth to a residential market has basically
failed and does not provide any real competition to wired last-mile access.
Without that there is no competitive market for the last mile.

The current landscape is that mobile service providers basically do not
provide any service that meet the needs of residential networks. It is
difficult to even connect a network of devices to a mobile wireless hotspot
without violating the terms of service from the mobile provider or very
rapidly hitting bandwidth caps. As far as I can tell, multiple small companies
focused on providing wireless residential network service have failed, or
stayed very small regional companies because of an inherent technological
inadequacy of wireless to compete with the same level of wired transit...

So it becomes not a market for raw bandwidth (which I would be reasonably
happy with), but a market for access to bandwidth bundled with whatever junk
the provider is trying to bundle. That bandwidth is further encumbered with
business agreements restraining travel of data through last-mile access
bottlenecks based on secondary agreements not between the customer and ISP
(and not disclosed to the end consumer). This also does not make for a good
market - choice and visibility are removed from the customer.

------
dreamcompiler
The beautiful thing about a VPN is it means I don't have to care who
voluntarily agrees to what.

~~~
droopyEyelids
I don't know if you're making a joke, but revoking Net Neutrality is exactly
the thing a VPN won't protect you from.

If ISPs are allowed to charge different rates for different traffic types on
their network, they can charge an exorbitant fee for VPN traffic and punish
you.

~~~
dreamcompiler
They can, but they won't. Most major companies and the government require
their employees to use VPNs now, and an ISP can't tell the difference between
a personal VPN and an employer-mandated one. If they penalize VPN users,
they're going to get flack from the Fortune 500 and from the governments whose
goodwill they depend on to exist, not just from a bunch of individual hackers.

~~~
anigbrowl
ISPs can easily tell the difference between corporate and residential
customers, and penalize the latter. 'I can figure out a way to game this
system therefore it's not a problem' is a very hackerish response, but it's
also an immature one; not because it's bad to mediate social relations with
technology, but to pretend that oneself is the only actor one needs to be
concerned about, a position which is neither pragmatic nor principled. Of
course I don't expect you to hew to the same principles as I do, but as a
practical matter you won't be able to invent/hack your way out of your
problems forever* so it behooves you to consider situations in which that
strategy will not be available to you.

* unless you die young or go live in a cabin in the woods like Ted Kaczynski.

~~~
dreamcompiler
> ISPs can easily tell the difference between corporate and residential
> customers

How?

BTW I agree with you that we can't just hack our way out of policy problems.
But _one_ avenue of resistance to bad policy is technology.

~~~
anigbrowl
Street maps? Kind of service their customers asked to buy? They don't know
anything about why you're browsing but they know what kind of service you're
buying from them because you told them. OK you could buy the basic corporate
package because you like the download speeds and then just use it as a
consumer to watch multiple cat videos at once, but most people aren't going to
pay extra for the business package. It's like lying to political pollsters, a
few people do it but not enough to invalidate the basic methodology of
polling.

