
The FCC plan to undo its net neutrality rules - sinak
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/04/26/heres-the-fccs-plan-to-undo-its-own-net-neutrality-rules
======
ficho
"“Two years ago, I warned that we were making a serious mistake,” Pai said.
“It’s basic economics: The more heavily you regulate something, the less of it
you’re likely to get.”

Just reading this makes me angry. Has he ever heard of monopolies /
oligopolies, or simply the place of government in regulating public utilities.

Apply his quote to water supplies and see what happens.

~~~
twoodfin
Demand for water isn't growing at nearly the rate of demand for bits. If
communities expected their regulated water utilities to deliver twice as much
water every 18-36 months, they'd be in for some tough times.

~~~
ficho
That's irrelevant, if anything in your example you should compare growth in
productivity for bits and for water independently and see if they manage to
meet their demands Also water is a much more finite supply.

The point of my example was that as you leave government out of the tap water
market and instead of getting more of it, you get less, more expensive and of
lesser quality. Economics teach that in some industries, the government and a
certain amount of regulation is healthy and good for the market; leaving
actors to themselves just makes them tend naturally towards monopolies which
then trifle innovation. Communications is one of those markets.

~~~
rayiner
The difference in demand is highly relevant: U.S. water utilities can't even
attract enough investment to replace century-old lead pipes and sewers;
similarly tepid investment in internet infrastructure would have left us all
with dial-up still.

The U.K. and France have both privatized their water systems and it has worked
fine. Conversely, U.S. water systems, which are mostly still publicly owned,
are a total disaster:
[http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2015/09/epa_1_trillion_n...](http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2015/09/epa_1_trillion_needed_for_us_p.html).

Economics certainly teaches that some markets are susceptible to natural
monopolies and government regulation is appropriate there. But it also teaches
that making a kind of business less profitable will drive investment away from
that business. The question is _how do you regulate_ to balance those
competing concerns. You have to protect consumers, but you also have to figure
out how to get sufficient investment into the industry.

The U.K. does a good job balancing the interests. There is a single, regulated
monopoly that owns most of the last mile (BT Openreach), but the regulations
are designed so that the monopoly is actually very profitable. Most state and
local governments do a terrible job balancing those interests with regards to
utility companies. Regulated rates keep water and sewer bills low, but
dramatically limit the profitability of water utilities. As a result our water
infrastructure is hundreds of billions of dollars in the red.

~~~
ficho
Regarding the example of France the trend you're pointing out is out of date.
After years of water privatization which drove costs up for municipalities and
quality down, there's a reversal towards public management of the water
supply. Privatization and deregulation pushed the market to an oligopoly of
three main actors, Veolia, Suez and SAUR which eliminated competition and
pushed costs up for consumers for a worse quality of water. That trend that
was before celebrated (and embraced in the US, with Veolia and Suez heavily
active there), is now being full on reversed, with measurable benefits for
consumers and municipalities.

The US is still lagging behind on that realization and it's a common mistake
to think that privatizing water supplies holds benefits for towns and
consumers. Most often in these cases, deregulation brings benefits in the
short term as private actors compete heavily to win public markets, but not in
the long term when the market tends to an oligopoly / monopoly and private
actors don't have any more incentive to push on innovation or investments.

The issue of lack of investment isn't a problem of too much regulation, on the
contrary. These are markets with very high costs of entry where you need a
strong regulatory framework to mandate a couple actors to a large enough
market for those investments to be viable. You quote the example of
communications, in France by law France Telecom had to expand its network to
reach any citizen, whether 10km away from the grid or 10m at no cost for the
consumer. This led to a great coverage of the territory and very high access
to broadband for most of the population.

Take the example of the US, where internet access costs easily $100 a month,
has just a couple actors sharing the market in each city, in a proper position
of cartel, and where government regulation is nearly non-existent; and oppose
this to most european countries where a 100mb symmetrical connection will cost
you 30 EUR.... On the counter, what really disrupted the French Telecom market
was the arrival of Free, which offered costs so low Telecoms had to find ways
to match their prices.

It's a fallacy to think that these markets don't need regulation, but it's
another one to think government can do everything ;)

Sources: [http://in.reuters.com/article/water-utilities-paris-
idINL6N0...](http://in.reuters.com/article/water-utilities-paris-
idINL6N0PE57220140708) [http://thewip.net/2009/01/28/local-water-renaissance-
in-fran...](http://thewip.net/2009/01/28/local-water-renaissance-in-france-
ends-century-long-privatization-monopoly/)

~~~
rayiner
For context, the recent move in Paris ends over a century of water
privatization. The city seems to have managed fine during that time frame. The
focus on consumer prices is emblematic of the problem with public water
management. Water/sewer services _shouldn 't be cheap._ Prices should be high
enough to adequately maintain infrastructure. Water rates in the U.S. are less
than half of what they are in France,[1] and as a result, our water
infrastructure is in terrible shape.[2]

> You quote the example of communications, in France by law France Telecom had
> to expand its network to reach any citizen, whether 10km away from the grid
> or 10m at no cost for the consumer. This led to a great coverage of the
> territory and very high access to broadband for most of the population.

There is no free lunch. More money spent covering more people means less money
invested in improving infrastructure in urban areas.

France is not a great counterpoint to the U.S. model of regulating ISPs.
According to 2016 OECD data, France does have higher overall broadband
deployment (40 per 100 inhabitants versus ~33 per 100 in the US).[3] But the
vast majority of it is DSL rather than much faster cable. According to
Akamai's latest broadband speed report,[4] France ranks 52nd in the world in
average speed (page 32). The U.S. ranks 14th (page 24). The U.S. has 42% of
connections above 15mbps, versus just 16% in France (pages 25, 34).

[https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-
of-t...](https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-
internet/q4-2016-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf).

> Take the example of the US, where internet access costs easily $100 a month,
> has just a couple actors sharing the market in each city, in a proper
> position of cartel, and where government regulation is nearly non-existent;
> and oppose this to most european countries where a 100mb symmetrical
> connection will cost you 30 EUR

The fact that you can get 100mb symmetrical connections cheaply in some places
doesn't reflect "most of Europe." Fiber is available in almost every U.S. city
I've ever lived or worked in (Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia,
Wilmington, Washington, Annapolis--all except Baltimore and Wilmington, but
even those have fiber in the surrounding suburbs). But that's not necessarily
representative of the U.S.--you need to look at aggregate, not anecdotal data.

Almost 2/3 of the EU lives in: Germany, France, the U.K., Italy, or Spain.
According to Akamai's data, those countries all have slower average internet
speeds than the U.S. That is consistent with the OECD data, which shows that
three of the five lag the U.S. in fiber deployment (counting the U.K.'s FTTN
as fiber rather than DSL) and rely predominantly on slower DSL rather than
faster cable technologies.

[1] [http://everylittledrop.com.au/knowledge-center/the-cost-
of-w...](http://everylittledrop.com.au/knowledge-center/the-cost-of-water/)

[2] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/us-water-
safety_us_56bcf...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/us-water-
safety_us_56bcf122e4b0b40245c5d388).

[3] [http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1_2-OECD-
WiredWirelessBB-2...](http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1_2-OECD-
WiredWirelessBB-2016-06.xls)

[4] [https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-
of-t...](https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-
internet/q4-2016-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf)

~~~
ficho
> For context, the recent move in Paris ends over a century of water
> privatization. The city seems to have managed fine during that time frame.
> The focus on consumer prices is emblematic of the problem with public water
> management. Water/sewer services shouldn't be cheap. Prices should be high
> enough to adequately maintain infrastructure. Water rates in the U.S. are
> less than half of what they are in France,[1] and as a result, our water
> infrastructure is in terrible shape.[2]

No, that happened in 1984.
([https://research.ncl.ac.uk/media/sites/researchwebsites/goba...](https://research.ncl.ac.uk/media/sites/researchwebsites/gobacit/Anne%20Le%20Strat.pdf)
slide 11 or [http://www.eaudeparis.fr/lespace-
culture/patrimoine/](http://www.eaudeparis.fr/lespace-culture/patrimoine/)).

> You quote the example of communications, in France by law France Telecom had
> to expand its network to reach any citizen, whether 10km away from the grid
> or 10m at no cost for the consumer. This led to a great coverage of the
> territory and very high access to broadband for most of the population.

>> There is no free lunch. More money spent covering more people means less
money invested in improving infrastructure in urban areas.

The point here is that the regulatory authority creates a legal framework
which favors investement in the grid, resolving one of the inefficiencies of
the market (no interest in paying 2MM euros to connect a person who's distant
in the country side), makes investments happen which would never take place
under a fully deregulated environment. This addresses issues of digital
inequalities which would push actors on investing only on people or products
which can yield the higher profits. At term it hurts society.

I'll take your points on the OCED and Akamai rankings, and yes I provided
anecdotal evidence, not a lot of time for research :) But my sense is that if
you compare speeds delivered to prices paid, consumers are still much better
off in Europe. The other point which might be hard to quantify is the little
choice US consumers have when choosing their ISP. It's often one or two actors
who offer the same speed, price points and whose situation of oligopoly allows
them to forgo proper consumer support alltogether (TWC). That is the result of
no regulation and I don't see how more of that will benefit consumers.

More sources on water remunicipalisation:
[https://www.tni.org/en/article/180-cities-take-back-
public-c...](https://www.tni.org/en/article/180-cities-take-back-public-
control-of-water-showing-remunicipalisation-is-here-to-stay)

[https://www.tni.org/en/publication/here-to-stay-water-
remuni...](https://www.tni.org/en/publication/here-to-stay-water-
remunicipalisation-as-a-global-trend)

------
outsidetheparty
> Pai argued that rolling back the rules will encourage ISPs to spend more on
> their broadband networks

How? How on earth does letting ISPs milk more money out of their existing
network incentivize those ISPs to expand that network? It's just so
frustrating that these guys no longer even bother to pretend that their
arguments make any logical sense at all. "We'll protect user privacy by
eliminating these rules that protect user privacy!" "We'll boost competition
and choice, by giving the existing entrenched players more control and power!"

This is just such a naked demonstration of regulatory capture. It boggles my
mind.

~~~
splintercell
> How on earth does letting ISPs milk more money out of their existing network
> incentivize those ISPs to expand that network?

The fundamental idea is that the amount of investment done in a venture is
directly proportional to the profitability of that venture. If govt makes a
regulation saying that Google can provide Hangouts service, but it cannot
charge more for Enterprise Hangouts features, then Google has no additional
incentive to expand the hangouts service than what it gets by having the
business of consumer market.

If Uber/Lyft is previously not allowed to provide priority Corporate service
to corporate clients (and let's just say they do it by letting the corporate
Uber cars bypass the consumer Uber cars using their Map service) then
Uber/Lyft are allowed to do that, then their increased profit margins will
allow them to fund their autonomous car other operations to build the network
faster.

You may disagree with the ethic of overnight delivery services of UPS, but at
least not pretend that if UPS is allowed to charge more and deliver packets
overnight then this allows them invest more into their infrastructure.

~~~
outsidetheparty
Eliminating net neutrality incentivizes ISPs to build auxiliary services that
they can artificially support by throttling the bandwidth of competing
products. It incentivizes them to seek profit by favoring some net traffic
over other net traffic.

It does not in any way incentivize them to build larger or better networks. It
does not incentivize them to invest in their infrastructure. All it does is
let them make more profit off what they already have.

I mean seriously, if the whole argument is that they're not making enough
money as it is: if a 97%[1] profit margin isn't enough money for them to build
out their networks, just how much more do they need?

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/time-warner-
cab...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/time-warner-
cables-97-pro_b_6591916.html)

~~~
splintercell
Business Model 1:

Build your own services and throttle everyone else's services unless they pay
a premium (in which case your own services would be cheaper, but the profit
they get from their own services must be higher than the profit they get from
NOT selling the bandwidth their premium service uses, to third parties).

Let's put it this way, if a hotel builds a Jacuzzi, you're argument is that
the hotel owner will only let their own family and friends use the Jacuzzi
whereas they will charge anyone else more money to use it. But the time their
buddies are using the Jacuzzi could be sold for a fee to the third party, so
in order for them to rationally do this, they must gain enough favors that it
justifies them to NOT make the extra profit.

In case of the ISP scenario, the Verizon Music better offer them higher
profitability than letting it be used by actual Spotify and charging them. If
they charge Spotify's $5 per month per user, then Verizon Music better bring
them same or higher revenue or else running Verizon Music isn't worth it.

Business Model 2:

Invest in infrastructure and try to take over bigger market.

You're claiming "There is no way they will go for business model 2, they will
go for business model 1". But you have no presented any reason why they would
do that? We have reasons to believe that even when companies are very good at
doing something internally, the parent company sells them off because it's a
more profitable model.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> You're claiming "There is no way they will go for business model 2, they
> will go for business model 1". But you have no presented any reason why they
> would do that?

There are two reasons they would do that.

The first is price discrimination. Suppose Spotify makes $2/month worth of
profit but uses $0.05/month in bandwidth. Now Verizon can charge them $2/month
for that amount of bandwidth and take their entire margin. Even if Spotify
nominally continues to exist, they now have no margins to reinvest or use to
attract new private investment, so they're walking dead. Which harms customers
because now Spotify can never improve their service. And if Verizon does have
a competing service (see also: TV and phone) then Verizon's service gets an
insurmountable competitive advantage.

Which leads to the second reason, which is to extract monopoly rents. Suppose
Spotify charges $10/month because they have competitors, so they can't charge
more without losing business. But if they had no competitors then they could
charge $25/month. Which means that _Verizon_ can charge $25/month if they can
get rid of all the competitors, which they can do by just charging them all
unsustainably high data prices.

Hotels can't do this because hotels have real competition.

~~~
cmdrfred
What happens when Spotify emails its customers saying "sorry we can't provide
service to Verizon customers anymore, they charge us too much"

Some may stay and downgrade their service as they don't require as much
bandwidth and some may leave Verizon entirely. It's not all roses for them.

Then Comcast, AT&T, Google or anyone else frankly begins offering "True
unlimited full access internet" and eats Verizon's breakfast, lunch and
dinner.

Meanwhile someone creates a VPN service to get around the blockade.

~~~
awalton
> Then Comcast, AT&T, Google or anyone else frankly begins offering "True
> unlimited full access internet" and eats Verizon's breakfast, lunch and
> dinner.

You seem to be intentionally forgetting that these ISPs have segregated
themselves such that they do not have to compete with one another. In most of
the US, you get one choice of fast internet (Verizon or Comcast or Time
Warner) and one choice of slow internet (whatever DSL you can find) - you may
not even get satellite or dial up anymore.

So, when Verizon says "Screw you Google and Netflix and Spotify", their
customers don't go "hey Comcast/AT&T/Google, c'mere", they say "how much do I
have to pay you to make the pain stop... for now..." (The customers of all of
these horrible ISPs have been screaming the "hey [other ISP] come to my area"
line for literally decades, but the ISPs don't listen because they have either
agreed explicitly or implicitly not to push into one another's turf to
maximize everyone's profits.)

This is why we _need_ net neutrality. If the market was competitive, it'd be a
different story altogether. But it is provably not (hell, they've used the
fact the markets are not competitive to try to convince the FTC to allow them
to merge with other ISPs because "it would not reduce overall competition,
since they do not compete in such-and-such markets"), and despite the
government drowning AT&T and its many children with hundreds of billions of
dollars over the past few decades to build high speed networks for everyone,
they _still_ organized their networks in such a way to maintain monopoly
powers (albeit in smaller, more fragmented markets).

ISPs in America do as little as possible, collecting the biggest check as
possible, and use the massive profits to squeeze competitors out (like they
have successfully done with Google giving up the ghost of expanding _even in
Mountain View California where they are headquartered_ and as they are scaling
up to do to municipalities creating their own networks like Chattanooga).
They're consistently rated as the worst businesses in America, but they are
_infrastructure_ , so we pay them anyway. And now they're learning that more
profits exist in content than it does in carrying the content fairly, so they
want to be the source of the content too. And that means killing net
neutrality to making themselves the sole arbiters of the market.

~~~
cmdrfred
I have Verizon(fiber), Comcast(coax) and AT&T(copper) where I live. Not to
mention satellite and 4G internet options.

~~~
throwanem
Congratulations! You're an outlier.

~~~
cmdrfred
Then use a VPN? Or is the idea they will charge high rates for all traffic
(already legal by the way) thus preventing access to the majority of the
internet?

~~~
throwanem
The idea is that, in the majority of markets where a single ISP has an
effective monopoly, that ISP can do what it damn well please within the limit
of enforceable law and regulation, and there's not a whole lot that can be
done to prevent it.

The idea is further that, not only does it make pragmatic sense for so
favorably positioned an ISP to act aggressively in defense of that position,
but such ISPs have been observed to do so, as for example with AT&T's
successful defeat of the recent municipal broadband expansion bill in
Tennessee. AT&T's position is that taxpayer money should not be used to fund
competition with private industry, which all sounds very fine and upstanding,
except that the private industry has already stifled any possibility of
competition by means of the sort of monopolistic activity which US governments
spent much of the early 20th century working to restrict, in order to prevent
the unsavory outcomes that such activity has been observed to produce in
direct proportion to the degree in which it's successfully pursued.

So, sure, they can charge high rates for traffic if they want, in addition to
charging more or less whatever rates they please simply to provision backhaul
in the first place. They can impose a $20/month, or higher, charge for
reliable access to video streamed from services other than those they
themselves run. They can do whatever they're able to get away with - and in an
environment of permissive and favorable legislation and no effective private
competition, they get away with a hell of a lot.

In case it matters, I'm really not progressive, and I understand business
reasonably well - I've been in private industry my entire career, with no one
doing me any favors, and if I didn't have at least a generally accurate idea
of how things work, I wouldn't be able to support myself. In particular, I
find the current attitude held by the federal, and many state, governments,
toward small business enterprises, absurd and execrable - and I've seen the
onerous burden such an attitude inflicts on people who go into business for
themselves. But the current attitude toward _large_ business is a whole
'nother matter entirely, and I see nothing of value to our polity as a whole
in the results of such gross permissiveness. Expanding such permissiveness
still further strikes me as very much the wrong thing to do.

~~~
cmdrfred
The thing is everyone has mobile phones for the most part. If a local ISP
makes cost of doing business for Netflix so high that Netflix no longer offers
that service at a reasonable price. Many consumers will either scale back
their connection or cancel it entirely.

"What's the point of paying $100 a month for Facebook and Instagram? I get
that on my phone anyway! I don't want Verizon's $100 a month TV plan, I want
house of cards."

As the ISP mostly has sunk costs and slim margins if even 5% of its user base
leaves in a certain market that will render them insolvent or force them to
raise prices, causing more departures, and higher prices still...

The point is while they don't always have direct competition they do have a
decent amount of elasticity of demand.

~~~
throwanem
Everyone has mobile phones, but not that many people have unlimited data _and_
a high enough data rate to handle household streaming demands - usually you
only get one or the other, and even "unlimited" usually hits a cap after a
while. I don't think the elastic is as stretchy as you seem to be suggesting
it is.

~~~
cmdrfred
I understand they don't have unlimited data, but if they can't stream Netflix
(insert your preferred service here) anyway what's the point of keeping the
wireline internet service? Five gigs a month is a lot of Facebook/Snapchat and
Instagram. Either way they won't have access to the content they want. Why not
save a few dollars or move those dollars towards mobile data? Sure they can go
to the ISP's media service but those are priced at the cable model for the
most part and not really competitive, I don't know anyone under 40 that has
cable service anymore. If you used to pay $15 for 4K high quality original
content and now you are offered $60 a month for often low quality content with
commercials would you take that deal? I'd pass.

A big cost for ISP's is customer acquisition, even if they change back their
policies it will be years, maybe decades to recover. I think if an ISP did
this on any large scale it would be suicide.

~~~
throwanem
Under a lot of data plans, it'd still be cheaper for a moderate to heavy
streaming video user to pay Comcast the vig it wants, than to pay wireless
data rates for the same bandwidth.

I guarantee you Comcast has made the same calculation, too, down to the
fractional cent. Whatever vig they charge, if they do, will be scaled
accordingly.

~~~
cmdrfred
The customer isn't paying the "vig" it's the distributor, If Netflix isn't
profitable on Comcast's network Netflix will simply stop offering service to
Comcast customers. They will have no other option, thus might opt out entirely
as they go from moderate or heavy streaming users to not streaming at all.

Also keep in mind they would still be subject to anti-trust regulation, they
really can only take it so far before getting broken up again.

~~~
throwanem
And Netflix raises subscription rates to make up for the added cost. The
customer still pays the vig.

~~~
cmdrfred
To: AllComcastCustomers

From: NetflixSupport@Netflix.com

Subject: Comcast is increasing the monthly cost of Nextflix

"Dear Valued Customer,

Here at Netflix we endeavor to offer the highest value for your entertainment
dollar, it is with that in mind we regret to inform you that due to sweeping
and punitive fee increases brought on at the sole discretion of Comcast we
will be forced to raise our prices 425% next billing cycle. Customers of other
ISP's will enjoy the same low price that we have always offered, in fact we
are offering our service at our cost to Comcast customers at this new rate.
Please contact Comcast customer service at 1-800-Comcast if you would like
this issue resolved as it is out of our hands.

Have a great day"

~~~
throwanem
At which point Comcast probably sues Netflix for anticompetitive practices.

~~~
cmdrfred
"It was the shortest civil defence in the history of law. No experts. No
witnesses. He simply stood up and proclaimed 'Pot, kettle, black, the defense
rests.' ""

------
tzs
> Pai's proposal is set for a vote at the FCC's May 18 open meeting. If it is
> approved, Pai will begin seeking public feedback on the plan, which calls
> for regulating ISPs more lightly and asks Americans for ways to preserve the
> core principles of net neutrality, such as the idea that blocking or slowing
> traffic should be off-limits.

Well, the obvious way to "preserve the core principles of net neutrality, such
as the idea that blocking or slowing traffic should be off-limits" is to not
get rid of the regulation that prohibits blocking or slowing traffic.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Well, the obvious way to "preserve the core principles of net neutrality,
> such as the idea that blocking or slowing traffic should be off-limits" is
> to not get rid of the regulation that prohibits blocking or slowing traffic.

Yeah, and hopefully as much energy (and more) as was mobilized against the
previous FCC for not being as vigorous as some wanted in the last round of
Open Internet rulemaking will be directed into the public comments for the FCC
actually reversing direction. But I don't expect it will matter as much; with
Wheeler's FCC, the goals were clearly for neutrality and the debate was over
the means; with Pai's FCC, despite lip service to the principles of
neutrality, the real overwhelming goal seems to be to free ISPs to do what
they want, so I'm not sure any contrary comment will have much weight.

------
hplust
Here is the EFF link [0] that provides additional information and also
provides methods of contacting your local government officials to take action.
Please send this along!

[0] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/04/fcc-wants-eliminate-
ne...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/04/fcc-wants-eliminate-net-
neutrality-protections-we-cant-let-happen)

~~~
IAmGarrett
This whole battle has felt like the consumers versus the ISP's. Is there
economic advantages to consumers if Net Neutrality is eliminated?

~~~
tw04
Sure - you'll get video streaming from content providers who are able to pay
large sums of money without hitting against the artificial caps currently in
place.

Of course, that also means it'll kill any competitors not willing or able to
pay the same extortion, so in the end you'll have less choice, but at least
you'll have saved money. Except you won't really save money because once the
current administration allows further consolidation in the wireless sector,
prices will rise with authority.

~~~
problems
> Of course, that also means it'll kill any competitors not willing or able to
> pay the same extortion, so in the end you'll have less choice, but at least
> you'll have saved money.

You might save a few bucks in the short run, but lack of competition doesn't
tend to be good for markets - especially ones which can rapidly change like
online services. Less choice generally means you're paying more.

------
sinak
Here is the "fact sheet" that Ajit Pai distributed at the event at the Newseum
today:
[https://twitter.com/davidshepardson/status/85728851922775655...](https://twitter.com/davidshepardson/status/857288519227756554)

Also of note, YC, TechStars and Engine Advocacy released their "Startups for
Net Neutrality" letter to Pai this morning: [http://www.engine.is/startups-
for-net-neutrality](http://www.engine.is/startups-for-net-neutrality)

~~~
Veratyr
It's factually incorrect though.

> Two years ago, the FCC suddenly changed course – even though there was no
> problem that the agency needed to solve.

There was a problem. The FCC enacted the Open Internet Order establishing Net
Neutrality in 2010, Verizon sued the FCC in 2014 and the court said the FCC
could only enact the order if Verizon was a Title II common carrier. The FCC
reclassified so that they could enforce the Open Internet Order, like the
court said it must.

You could argue that there was no problem that the Open Internet Order
addressed but that happened in 2010, 6 years ago, not two.

~~~
masklinn
Also doesn't seem to be on the fact sheet but Pai asserted that the interwebs
worked just fine under Clinton and Bush without ISPs being Title II common
carriers… except DSL ISPs were moved to Title I at the start of GWB II...

------
joezydeco
Wouldn't it be fun if Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and a few other streamers all
decided to throttle the Washington DC area down to, say, 10% of normal
outbound bandwidth for a long weekend?

Maybe it wouldn't touch Pai, but if it pissed off a huge block of his
neighbors maybe he'd start to understand the idea.

~~~
eli
Hah! The federal government doesn't care whatsoever about DC residents. We
don't even have a Senator to complain to. What exactly do you expect his
pissed off neighbors to do?

~~~
joezydeco
Okay, then wherever most of these public officials stay overnight and
weekends. Alexandria? McLean?

Congressmen would be tougher, since they're always flying around. The idea is
to bring the pain to people that surround Pai on a daily basis.

------
js2
I just setup monthly donations to the EFF (I'm ashamed I didn't do so a long
time ago), and you should too. Also don't forget to check if your employer
will match your donations.

[https://supporters.eff.org/donate/](https://supporters.eff.org/donate/)

~~~
ballenf
You can also choose them through the Amazon Smile program:

[https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/homepage/ref=smi_se_ssr_src...](https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/homepage/ref=smi_se_ssr_srch_stsr?q=electronic+frontier+foundation&orig=%2F)

------
theprop
I suggested a decade ago that Net Neutrality rules could be foregone, but one
important caveat is needed, that no charges to consumers or producers be
levied in respect to violating net neutrality i.e. a producer can't pay to
have their packets move faster/slower. That's the only way to prevent abuses
which are essentially extortion.

Without that rule, the ISPs will invest money into new networks...but it will
have negative consumer value and a lot of rent-seeking or pure extortion value
for the ISPs.

Packet-based systems are so efficient that some sort of QoS packet routing
makes no sense technically in respect to the overhead of brand new networking
schemes. Unbiased packet routing is doing just great streaming HD videos on
Netflix to 100 million people worldwide, and will continue to do great. The
more fundamental problem is that the bottlenecks are at the last mile and
there is NO WAY that Verizon is going to lay two cables to your home, one fast
lane for important traffic, and another slow lane!! Without last mile
investment, there can not be any meaningful technical gains from violating net
neutrality.

ISPs want to get rid of net neutrality in order to extort money from Google,
Facebook, Netflix and others. Netflix is already paying an extortion fee to
Verizon who threatened them with slower speeds if they didn't pay up.

The government's job is to insure that markets are fair and that effective
monopolies don't abuse their power, through simple regulations. ISPs and
Telco.s have regularly demonstrated for over a hundred years that they HAVE TO
BE REGULATED...we would not have an internet or an inter-operable phone
network if governments all over the world did force these companies to talk to
other networks! The breakup of AT&T just over two decades ago (seems much
longer!) was tremendous in spurring on lower costs and competitors in
telecommunications.

------
sxates
I'm paying 30% more each month to use a local ISP that's dedicated to Net
Neutrality and online privacy (sonic.net) instead of Comcast/xfinity, because
Comcast, along with the other large telecom companies, are actively
undermining competitive markets, consumer freedom, and in a sense, our
democracy.

An extra $20-30/month is a small price to pay to keep what little competition
they have alive. I'd encourage everyone else to examine their choices here if
they have any (which I realize for many is 'bad' or 'bad').

~~~
hanspragt
I am a Sonic subscriber myself, but they just resell AT&T so I am not sure how
much a difference it really makes.

~~~
r00fus
Sonic actually provides it's own fiber to the home to some areas (FTTH). Their
Fiber to the Node (FTTN) is resold AT&T.

------
cwisecarver
I live in a rural area in the mid-atlantic US. My choices for internet are
10mbit DSL from CenturyLink or LTE (with bandwidth caps). I've only lived here
for a year but my previous two homes have had at least two options for
100mbit+ internet, FiOS and Comcast, and LTE.

Comcast serves across the street from my house and told me it would be $76k
out of my pocket to get service here. For < 1mi run of fiber.

I'm 100% in favor of making ISPs common carriers and making it unlawful for
them to track their customers' habits. I've worked for two ISPs in my career.
They should be happy with the business of providing internet to customers and
compete on delivering better, faster, and more reliable service not on selling
their customers' information or eyeballs to the highest bidder.

------
doctorshady
So, I'm just going to ask outright; what would it take to get a politician
like Pai investigated? I'd find it very hard to believe at this point that he
doesn't have his hands stuck in exactly the sort of pies (no pun intended)
that could get him in trouble.

~~~
GeneralMayhem
Well, first, you'd need even a single person in his party not to be in it with
him, and to be willing to cross party lines to do what's right. That's
obviously not going to happen.

Second, you'd need corruption to be illegal. Since the people who benefit from
it are the ones writing the laws, it's not, at least not in the particular
ways they generally do it.

~~~
doctorshady
Maybe this is a stupid question, but why would it have to be someone of the
same party? Why couldn't it just be some unhappy members of the FCC staff?
Considering the jarring change from Wheeler to Pai, there's got to be a few
people with a good look at his schedule that don't approve of it.

~~~
GeneralMayhem
Because the Republicans control all three branches of the government, and
they're extremely well bought^H^H^H^H^H^H organized. In the rare case that a
non-Republican has the power to do anything, they'll be removed with or
without cause if they try (see: Sally Yates).

~~~
doctorshady
Let's say for the purposes of arguing though, that Trump or members of the
Trump administration are removed by way of the Russia investigation. I guess
it all works on a case by case basis, but generally speaking, how would that
affect the FCC chair's standing?

------
ShameSpear
I just feel hopeless. I don't think there's anything we can do at this point

~~~
stephenitis
It's OK to feel hopeless. You might want to focus on things that you do have
an effect on in your daily life and try not to dwell on the current news.
Changes aren't meant to be quick and drastic, our government is designed
deliberately so that it was slow.

also read into what the EFF does.

Stay strong and hang in there.

------
cakeface
The sneakiest thing just happened to me on that Washington Post site. There
was an overlay ad, no big deal, with an X to close it in the upper right of
the screen. I moved my mouse up there to click the X and the site shifted
slightly so what I actually clicked was "Subscribe"!

~~~
zkms
This is why I disable javascript on my laptop and block ads on my iphone. I
shouldn't have to chase around advert-closing buttons that's jinking like a
high-performance fighter aircraft.

~~~
milcron
If you run Firefox on Android, you can use the NoScript extension there as
well.

Sadly, Firefox for iOS is just a wrapper around WebKit, so Firefox extensions
do not work there.

~~~
pythonistic
Firefox Reader view has been my savior both on laptops and on my mobile phone.
It doesn't work on every page, but where it does, it removes the styling and
JavaScript and I get to concentrate on the content.

------
msoad
Like many other republican policies it's going to hurt the poor more than
others. I would probably be fine paying extra to access "all of internet" but
for a low income person it's going to be devastating. They will lose access to
many useful resources due to this policy.

------
digitalmaster
The power and influence of monopolies are a direct threat to democracy. This
is just another example.

------
notadoc
How, specifically, is this helpful to the consumer or to the internet in
general?

~~~
MS_Buys_Upvotes
It's not.

Not to get too political but there are two groups: "the people" and
"business". Watch every decision the current administration makes. It's
helpful for "business" and hurts "the people". This is the opposite of what
most people think it should be.

~~~
ue_
> Watch every decision the current administration makes.

Just the current administration, or democracies around the world? It's a fact
that capital rules economy and by extension our lives. Why do you think it
would be any different under Obama, Hillary, Lincoln, Thatcher, Blair, Castro,
Kim Jong Un or Abe? The kind of democracy we have is bourgeois democracy - in
place to protect the intersts of those owners of private property, thereby to
assure functioning also protecting to some extent those interests of the
people, to afford them the freedom necessary under capitalism, but no more.

It's not an issue of people v business, it's an issue of capital, which rules
every country. It's not even businesses, it's capital itself.

~~~
coldpie
Narrowing your focus to the particular issue at stake in this thread, there's
an obvious and clear difference between how the Democrat-controlled FCC
behaved and how the Republican-controlled FCC is behaving. Both parties are
not the same.

------
Corrado
"Pai argued that rolling back the rules will encourage ISPs to spend more on
their broadband networks, speeding the spread of high-speed Internet across
the country. He also claimed it would create new jobs and help protect
Internet users' privacy by returning some authority to the Federal Trade
Commission to sue companies that violate their own privacy policies."

So, "create new jobs" is the new "think of the children" in politics. If you
want to get anything done in the current political climate you just have to
utter that magical phrase and everything is OK. Based on this, I'm going to
view any policy that claims to create jobs with the same sceptical eye as I
used with the children fear mongers.

------
jenniferh19
With the destruction of net neutrality the ISPs control the internet basically
free to do as they wish. Block ISPs for good with VPN such as PureVPN
[https://www.purevpn.com/](https://www.purevpn.com/)

------
pvnick
This is what happens when bureaucrats in the administrative state determine
rules rather than congress.

~~~
GeneralMayhem
You can't seriously think that the current Congress would do better?

------
emehrkay
Hacker News'ers, why did you vote for republicans knowing they'd do something
like this?

------
rdxm
would be really interrsting to do a deep dive on Pai's personal finances. He's
not even trying to hide how much he's in the bag for the telecom/ISPs.

~~~
doctorshady
Isn't this exactly the sort of thing the government accountability office is
for? I'm seriously asking - someone this transparently corrupt deserves an
investigation big time.

------
kakarot
We're all getting very tired. If this doesn't pass today, it will pass
tomorrow. The slow entrenchment of government over our freedoms and rights as
international sovereign beings seems relentless. If we cannot push for high-
order legislation outlining very clear rules for our digital rights soon, we
won't have any rights left to claim. And then we can only take them by force.
I would prefer to avoid that.

