
Ajit Pai is right - OberstKrueger
https://stratechery.com/2017/why-ajit-pai-is-right/
======
zbruhnke
This person misses the entire point of the argument for Net Neutrality - Yes
it can be convenient if you know ALL of the apps and or services you'd like to
use, however the entire internet being visible means putting small companies
you have not yet heard of on nearly equal footing - giving them the chance to
compete against the giants of commerce and sometimes (yes, sometimes it
happens) WIN!

The beauty of the internet has been the ability for new things to pop up and
create a real impact on the world economy starting with just a website.

If the rules Ajit Pai wants in place were to be in place when Amazon got
started its likely Wal-Mart could have paid to simply make them disappear for
most internet providers by "buying" the right to e-commerce traffic.

That's not a world I want to live in - and its not one you should want to live
in either if you believe in dreaming and creating something larger than
yourself

~~~
thehardsphere
Did I miss some new proposal that Ajit Pai has put forward?

It is my understanding that "The rules Ajit Pai wants in place" were in place
from sometime during the ninties or earlier, until 2015. That is, Ajit Pai
merely wishes to undo a rule that was only in force from 2015 to the present.

Am I mistaken? Because I think the world you say you don't want to live in is
the one we actually did live in for most of the history of the Internet,
unless I'm missing something.

~~~
cptskippy
The fundamental flaw in your argument is that you're failing to ask one very
important question. Why was the rule put in place in 2015?

Most regulations, like laws, are reactive in nature.

If our existing laws and regulations were good enough then why would we need
to elect new law makers? Why would we even need them at all?

The fact is that people are constantly finding new and creative ways to
exploit others and or ever evolving laws and regulations are a response to
this exploitation.

~~~
thehardsphere
Actually, I am asking that. Several other commentors have asserted that "the
world changed" a few years before the rule passed, yet nobody has really
explained in detail how. So far I've gotten a hypothetical about Wal-Mart
paying ISPs to destroy Amazon, which didn't actually happen. (Though I haven't
read other responses yet, so maybe there's something more here I just have
missed.)

But, let's take a closer look at what you just said here. You are correct that
many laws and regulations are reactive in nature. That doesn’t automatically
justify them. As a matter of fact, it is often the case that the most reactive
laws and regulations can be some of the worst, as has constantly been
demonstrated from September 11, 2001 to the present day. I mean, there is a
real problem with terrorism, but that real problem doesn't automatically
justify banning travel from 8 majority-Muslim countries, does it?

At least in the terrorism example, I have some understanding of how terrorism
exploits people, and that makes it possible to debate how to use the
government to protect people from that exploitation (or to protect other
people from exploitation by the government, in the name of protecting people
from explotation). Individual acts of terrorism have been clearly identified
and publicized, so it is possible to have a coherent public policy discussion.
But in the net neutrality case, everyone either discusses:

1\. Hypotheticals, like Wal-Mart paying Comcast to destroy Amazon 2\. Court
cases that... actually were resolved in court under anti-trust law 3\.
Assertions that new censorship will take place like we've never seen before,
even though we'd be going back to the pre-2015 status quo.

Despite sounding flippant about it, I don't actually mean to. People here are
pretty smart, so if they're all worked up about it, I must be the one missing
something. I would just like someone to coherently explain what that is.

~~~
takeda
The reason FCC made change in 2015, because in 2014 court ruled that with
prior classification, FCC had no authority to enforce anything unless they
reclassify the Internet.

Before the ruling, the companies were still respecting what FCC said (here are
some cases that happened between 2002 (when FCC reclassified Internet as a
telecommunication service) and 2015[1]), now the cat is out of the bag.

Also note that 2015 change essentially brought back what was changed in 2002.

[1] [https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-
vio...](https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-violations-
brief-history)

~~~
jyrkesh
So in all of the cases listed in your citation, was it the FCC that censured
them in order to get the corrective behavior?

I'm cherrypicking here, but as an avid Bittorrent user, I remember there being
significant debate with the community about the extent and methods that
Comcast was using to "throttle" Bittorrent. (And I can honestly say that I was
never impacted by them.) And I say this as someone who despises Comcast
(regretfully, I'm stuck with them even today).

In any case, it doesn't pop out at me that many of those violations were
actually mitigated by the FCC. E.g. Google Wallet got blocked, but
Isis(sic)/Softcard was just terrible. By the time it was dying, carriers were
letting Google Wallet through and then Apple Pay paved the way for Android
Pay.

And actually a few of them (like zero-rating in the case of MetroPCS), aren't
negative in my mind. I get the "startups can't compete" thing, but
particularly mobile data cabs are still necessary today, and I'm okay with
innovative, pro-consumer pricing models that get mobile internet into the
hands of more people (which is intuitively going to happen when non-incumbents
are the ones doing the innovating).

~~~
takeda
Net neutrality doesn't prevent data caps, all it does is stating that ISP has
no business prioritizing/blocking one site over the other.

Essentially makes ISP just provide access to the Internet, and how you going
to use it is all up to you.

From the examples you gave, how do you feel about blocking VoIP, tethering
(even though they already had data caps, why do they care how I'm going to use
the data allocated to me?) how do you feel about telus blocking access to site
that was about labor strike by their employees, what if that would be used for
political gains (blocking sites company doesn't agree with?)

As for bittorrent, question. If a company is offering internet connection with
specific parameters and they then fail to deliver on that promise that's in my
opinion a false advertising.

If they have so many consumers that they can't guarantee the speeds they
provided it means they oversold, and they should be advertising it as a lower
speed than they actually did.

As for MetroPCS I'm not sure what the zero rating thing is, I guess you're
talking about them blocking all streaming except youtube. That's once again a
false advertising. They do that so they could say they offer "unlimited"
plans, even though they didn't.

As a consumer I want companies to be honest with me, what they are providing
so I can know ahead when I make decision. Saying something is "Unlimited*" is
misleading, because it's not really. The FCC also introduced "food labels" for
ISPs which reduced their ability to lie to customers.

------
metalliqaz
Ajit Pai isn't right, but here's why it doesn't even matter: he's ignoring the
will of the people.

Under his chairmanship the FCC has (1)intentionally made it more difficult to
comment on proceedings, (2) ignored the blatant and illegal automated
responses that flooded the comment system without the knowledge of the people
whose names were used, (3) tried to suppress participation by faking a DDOS,
(4) obstructed investigations into both #2 and #3, (5) used debunked claims
with debunked data to justify a rules change, and (6) come right out said that
comments would be ignored because they didn't contradict the debunked data.

They are lying, and the ISP-backed pundits that write articles like this are
lying too.

The one and only remedy to Net Neutrality is robust competition, but we waved
bye-bye to that long ago. ISPs have government-granted monopolies (or
duopolies), and they are vertically integrated.

We need the protection of NN, it's the only thing keeping the entrepreneurial
spirit alive in this country.

~~~
nobleach
The major issue with this "robust competition" (which I would tend to agree
with) What do you do when one entity (perhaps unfairly, or with taxpayer's
dollars) already been given one heck of an upper-hand? What if they've lobbied
to make it impossible for you to dig in the ground and run your "tubes" along
side theirs?

Has Comcast proven that they're open to "robust competition"? If I could
somehow find another way to pipe data into someone's home, do you think
Comcast would _not_ try to find some way to litigate against it? For an
industry that started as a community shared antenna, what do you think they'd
do to another group that tried to do basically the same thing? (read the
result of Aereo court case for the answer)

~~~
metalliqaz
that's what I meant when I said we "waved bye-bye" to competition. We lost
control, now Title II is the only way to get it back.

------
adamnemecek
> There is no evidence of systemic abuse by ISPs governed under Title I, which
> means there are not immediate benefits to regulation, only theoretical ones

False. They've tried in the past I believe. There was something with AT&T and
iPhone users around 2010 (IIRC it was about Facetime)? There were more.

Also the thing about Portugal and Euros. Yeah that graphic has been
circulating for a while now, it predates this discussion. It's an illustrative
graphic, not like a screen shot. Kinda like when you post a MFW picture but
it's not actually your face when.

Also, as a side note, what's stratechery.com? I've seen it posted a lot. I
read the wiki, but idk why I should care about this guy's opinion.

~~~
RexM
I found this list [https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-
vio...](https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-violations-
brief-history)

MADISON RIVER: In 2005, North Carolina ISP Madison River Communications
blocked the voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP) service Vonage. Vonage filed a
complaint with the FCC after receiving a slew of customer complaints. The FCC
stepped in to sanction Madison River and prevent further blocking, but it
lacks the authority to stop this kind of abuse today.

COMCAST: In 2005, the nation’s largest ISP, Comcast, began secretly blocking
peer-to-peer technologies that its customers were using over its network.
Users of services like BitTorrent and Gnutella were unable to connect to these
services. 2007 investigations from the Associated Press, the Electronic
Frontier Foundation and others confirmed that Comcast was indeed blocking or
slowing file-sharing applications without disclosing this fact to its
customers.

TELUS: In 2005, Canada's second-largest telecommunications company, Telus,
began blocking access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor
strike against the company. Researchers at Harvard and the University of
Toronto found that this action resulted in Telus blocking an additional 766
unrelated sites.

AT&T: From 2007–2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skype and other competing
VOIP phone services on the iPhone. The wireless provider wanted to prevent
iPhone users from using any application that would allow them to make calls on
such "over-the-top" voice services. The Google Voice app received similar
treatment from carriers like AT&T when it came on the scene in 2009.

WINDSTREAM: In 2010, Windstream Communications, a DSL provider with more than
1 million customers at the time, copped to hijacking user-search queries made
using the Google toolbar within Firefox. Users who believed they had set the
browser to the search engine of their choice were redirected to Windstream's
own search portal and results.

MetroPCS: In 2011, MetroPCS, at the time one of the top-five U.S. wireless
carriers, announced plans to block streaming video over its 4G network from
all sources except YouTube. MetroPCS then threw its weight behind Verizon's
court challenge against the FCC's 2010 open internet ruling, hoping that
rejection of the agency's authority would allow the company to continue its
anti-consumer practices.

PAXFIRE: In 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that several small
ISPs were redirecting search queries via the vendor Paxfire. The ISPs
identified in the initial Electronic Frontier Foundation report included
Cavalier, Cogent, Frontier, Fuse, DirecPC, RCN and Wide Open West. Paxfire
would intercept a person's search request at Bing and Yahoo and redirect it to
another page. By skipping over the search service's results, the participating
ISPs would collect referral fees for delivering users to select websites.

AT&T, SPRINT and VERIZON: From 2011–2013, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon blocked
Google Wallet, a mobile-payment system that competed with a similar service
called Isis, which all three companies had a stake in developing.

EUROPE: A 2012 report from the Body of European Regulators for Electronic
Communications found that violations of Net Neutrality affected at least one
in five users in Europe. The report found that blocked or slowed connections
to services like VOIP, peer-to-peer technologies, gaming applications and
email were commonplace.

VERIZON: In 2012, the FCC caught Verizon Wireless blocking people from using
tethering applications on their phones. Verizon had asked Google to remove 11
free tethering applications from the Android marketplace. These applications
allowed users to circumvent Verizon's $20 tethering fee and turn their
smartphones into Wi-Fi hot spots. By blocking those applications, Verizon
violated a Net Neutrality pledge it made to the FCC as a condition of the 2008
airwaves auction.

AT&T: In 2012, AT&T announced that it would disable the FaceTime video-calling
app on its customers' iPhones unless they subscribed to a more expensive text-
and-voice plan. AT&T had one goal in mind: separating customers from more of
their money by blocking alternatives to AT&T’s own products.

VERIZON: During oral arguments in Verizon v. FCC in 2013, judges asked whether
the phone giant would favor some preferred services, content or sites over
others if the court overruled the agency's existing open internet rules.
Verizon counsel Helgi Walker had this to say: "I'm authorized to state from my
client today that but for these rules we would be exploring those types of
arrangements." Walker's admission might have gone unnoticed had she not
repeated it on at least five separate occasions during arguments.

~~~
DigitalJack
Every single item in this list was rectified prior to 2015. This is
effectively showing title 1 is sufficient to address these harms.

~~~
ngoede
Except that at least two of these resulted in Comcast and then Verizon suing
and getting to continue doing each of them because the courts said they
couldn't regulate against those practices unless they became Common Carriers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Communications_Inc._v....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Communications_Inc._v._FCC_\(2014\))

------
kodablah
Arg. I feel like articles like this are calling me stupid with some
statements. Like this doozy:

"T-Mobile treats all data the same, some data just doesn’t cost money"

I guess I'm too stupid to understand what "same" means. Or:

"Zero-rating [...] Customers loved it"

That's not enough. The argument is about small providers conforming to
T-Mobile. What customers think is irrelevant I'm afraid. Then the author goes
on to explain how it lowered prices. It's like arguing the FDA shouldn't
regulate food at all, customers love unhealthy food, and the prices are lower
on unhealthy food, so everything's perfect right?

I will say I somewhat agree on the earlier part of the article. I don't
generally prefer premature regulations. But instead of asking "why do we need
these when ISPs are mostly self-regulating?" since that cat is out of the bag
we should be asking "why do we need to repeal these if they aren't harming the
situation?" Of course the latter question won't be answered truthfully. The
real answer, "so we can violate net neutrality" (or the "spirit of" or
whatever).

It's strange to see someone argue against being prematurely reactionary whilst
arguing for being reactionary in the other direction for something already on
the books. Want a different approach w/ the FTC or congress or something? Then
do that first, and then repeal the rules. Otherwise, leave well enough alone
unless, as I suspect, the true motive is that the rules are preventing things
ISPs want to do.

~~~
dgreensp
Exactly. This is like listening to Trump talk about Obamacare. Oh, he agrees
with the principles — more than the next guy! — but we’ve taken a massive step
in the wrong direction and need to repeal it.

I lost track of all the slimy rhetorical techniques in this article. FUD about
the “cost of regulations” by talking about restaurants in SF. Saying that
T-Mobile’s rise was good for competition, so I guess zero-rating is a good
thing after all (without arguing that it was specifically zero-rating that led
to T-Mobile’s rise). Saying the “only future we have to fear” is one where
these regulations stay... really?? Just because he has a hand-wavy argument
they might be bad, or at least unnecessary?

Oh, let’s not forget, the argument that regulations as written don’t eliminate
all possible ways to violate the spirit of the law, so they don’t do any good
at all. Law can be updated. If there was a legal loophole that let people
murder each other, would we say the laws against murder are pointless?

Zero-rating is not aligned with net neutrality, even if it’s currently allowed
by a loophole, and if it benefits some customer or some company in some way.
Hemming and hawing about it is just kicking up smoke.

The author wants to drive a wedge between the positions of “net neutrality”
and “ISPs are telecommunication carriers,” and I don’t see it. Or he wants
them to be neutral carriers but not have it be legally enforced. Or first
repeal the current enforcement, and then talk about enforcing it some other
way. Slimy, slimy, slimy.

~~~
dgreensp
I forgot another: I think at one point the author attributes the uproar over
net neutrality to “the media.”

------
j2kun
> It is worth noting, by the way, that BitTorrent users were free-loaders,
> using massively more bandwidth than the vast majority of Comcast’s
> customers.

I don't think that's how a service agreement works. If I'm paying for a
certain bandwidth and latency, I should get that (to within reasonably
improbable outages) if I use it 100% of the time or 1% of the time. If the ISP
can't keep up, they should be penalized for it or change the labels on the
thing they're selling. You don't see a cloud storage provider saying "you get
100 Gb of storage, but only if you don't use 99 Gb of it."

~~~
cbsmith
There's also the reality that the problem is _peak_ bandwidth, not total bytes
moved. It turns out... BitTorrent users use less bandwidth during peak _and_
bandwidth caps discourage people from pulling down data they might not use in
advance and instead grabbing it just in time _during peak bandwidth periods_.

~~~
cannonedhamster
There's also the reality that there's miles and miles of taxpayer funded black
fiber that they _choose_ not to light up so that they can claim a bandwidth
shortage.

~~~
majos
Can you expand on this?

~~~
cannonedhamster
It's part of this whole thing which is a rabbit hole unto itself:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/eli5_how_were_isps_able_to_pocket_the_200_billion/)

tldr version: There were very large subsidies paid to expand broadband as well
as the Universal Service Fund. The companies actually built out broadband
lines to a lot of areas with minimal coverage and then didn't build the last
mile because it was expensive and provided "separate but equal" services such
as WiMax, UVerse, or other less equitable services.

------
zzzeek
> Then you read about how San Francisco requires 14 permits that take 9 months
> to issue (plus a separate alcohol permit) and you wonder why anyone opens a
> restaurant at all (compounded by the fact that already-permitted restaurants
> have a vested interest in making the process more onerous over time).
> Multiply that burden by all of the restaurants that never get created and
> the cost is very large indeed.

so...either San Francisco has no restaurants at all, or this argument is
complete garbage.

> This argument certainly applies to net neutrality in a far more profound
> way: the Internet has been the single most important driver of not just
> economic growth but overall consumer welfare for the last two decades.

Two decades where Comcast did not own Universal did not own NBC, Time Warner
Cable did not own Warner, HBO, Turner, CNN, AT&T did not own them, and people
watched TV on about 50 cable channels and not at all on the internet, rented
DVDs/VHS from the video store and not at all on the internet. Cord cutting as
a viable thing for not just movies but also TV has only begun in the last
couple of years. [edit]: the conflicts of interest in modern ISPs, being that
they now produce and own huge slices of the content itself that they serve, in
fierce competition with just a few other giants, are orders of magnitude
greater than they were even five years ago.

> Given that all of that dynamism has been achieved with minimal regulatory
> oversight, the default position of anyone concerned about future growth
> should be maintaining a light touch.

A hand-wavy "regulations! killing business!" argument. Regulations have a
purpose and you will notice it every time you notice buildings having working
fire exits and your dairy product at the supermarket not killing you.

> I’ll say it again — who can be against net neutrality?

Comcast, who has tried to block certain services already.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_so...either San Francisco has no restaurants at all, or this argument is
complete garbage._

Or maybe you only get rich people and already successful chains opening new
restaurants. Maybe you don't get a lot of first-time small business owners and
innovative concepts because the barriers to entry are too high.

------
UseStrict
Sure, except just about every example of companies doing the right thing had
the flame of regulatory action and fines burning underneath them. If there was
no risk of severe financial backlash, they'd keep pushing harder.

Not to mention the huge swaths of the US where there is either effectively or
actually only one carrier. These companies don't act nationally - they will
target their efforts to desperate areas where their customers will have no
choice but to accept their terms. What incentive would they have to "innovate"
or "improve service?" None.

------
shmerl
_> Again, zero-rating is not explicitly a net-neutrality issue: T-Mobile
treats all data the same, some data just doesn’t cost money. _

False. Some data is not capped, while other is. So data is not treated the
same. Q.E.D. Net neutrality means - either don't cap it, or cap it all. No
preferential treatment. India for instance explicitly bans zero rating as part
of Net neutrality laws.

 _> There is evidence that pre-existing regulation and antitrust law, along
with media pressure, are effective at policing bad behavior_

There is also tons of evidence of existing anti-trust laws doing nothing to
stop monopolistic abuse. Data caps you brought above is an example in itself
(mostly in case of Comcast and the like). Despite complaints and bad PR,
Comcast pushes data caps on users, because they are monopolists and users have
little choice but to comply. Where was anti-trust law to stop that?

------
just_steve_h
His restaurant example actually undercuts his argument: despite the
"burdensome" licensing and safety requirements imposed by San Francisco, the
city is flooded with restaurants.

------
TomMckenny
> There is no evidence of systemic abuse by ISPs governed under Title I, which
> means there are not immediate benefits to regulation, only theoretical ones

No, there are many cases including blocking peer-to-peer, hijacking search
queries, blocking video streaming, blocking mobile payment, blocking
tethering, numerous cases of blocking voip and even blocking a union website
they disliked.

[https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-
vio...](https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-violations-
brief-history)

------
lovehashbrowns
I don't want an ISP to push ANY apps that won't count against your data cap.
How does that serve to promote competition? How is any company going to win
over Facebook/Spotify/Youtube/etc. when every single ISP offers an internet
plan that doesn't count data when used with those apps? That's outrageous, on
top of the obvious fact that ISPs will tend to push their own services over
others, or price-gouge apps to be promoted.

More importantly, I don't want this to be left up to good faith between ISPs,
antitrust regulation, and the media. I'd rather take away their ability to be
shitty right now as opposed to waiting until Comcast/Cox/Verizon/AT&T decide
they've had enough and that they need to implement slow/fast lanes and
whatever crappy things they want to do. It's not like they've ever proven to
be kind and trustworthiness. Please. The fact that people are still trying to
spin this around in their favor is pure insanity.

There's ABSOLUTELY NO chance that these companies are lobbying to get rid of
net neutrality THIS HARD and be doing it for the good of anyone. Garbage
companies, garbage intentions.

~~~
treis
How is any company going to win over Amazon with Prime free shipping and 2
hour delivery?

Being a big incumbent comes with advantages in every market. Even with Net
Neutrality and no zero rating, how are you going to come in and beat Netflix,
Google, or Amazon with their thousands of edge servers and exclusive content?

~~~
lovehashbrowns
Those issues are inherent to competition, not to the infrastructure. The ISPs
shouldn't be deciding who gets to stay or go. Their infrastructure should be
neutral, just as water pipes don't care if they're going to my house or to a
giant industrial corporation that has a stronghold over the steel industry.

I think my example is bad. I'll try a slightly better one: My water pipes
don't care if they go to my ABC brand dishwasher or another.

~~~
treis
Why not? Why shouldn't the best usage of a limited resource be determined by
who is willing to pay the most money?

Does this extend to other industries? Should we force Fedex/UPS to ship at one
speed only?

~~~
lovehashbrowns
Because I don't want an ISP to decide how much to charge one service or the
other, which ones should be blocked or not blocked, and which services to
promote or not promote. They have a monopoly, and a conflict of interest when
it comes to services they own (partly or whole).

Plus, ISPs can and do charge similar to UPS/Fedex. If you want a higher level
of service, faster speed, better hardware, etc. you can pay an ISP for a
business package, fiber, etc. That's similar to UPS charging for Overnight
Air, 2 day, etc. But UPS can't say "Oh you're Spotify, I'll charge you more to
deliver your mail." And there's also the fact that UPS, Fedex, USPS, and DHL
all compete with each other, whereas ISPs have literally agreed not to compete
with each other and have set up regional monopolies.

~~~
treis
See this is the problem with the pro NN side. It's littered with factual
inaccuracies and outright lies. ISPs, in the US at least, have not agreed to
not compete with each other and there's no regional monopolies. The majority
of the country has 2 or more broadband providers plus a plethora of wireless
and satellite options.

~~~
lovehashbrowns
Oh! Here are some lies for you: [https://www.cnbc.com/2014/05/28/cnbc-
exclusive-cnbc-transcri...](https://www.cnbc.com/2014/05/28/cnbc-exclusive-
cnbc-transcript-comcast-chairman-ceo-brian-roberts-speaks-with-cnbcs-squawk-
on-the-street-today.html)

> ROBERTS: FIRST OF ALL, BOTH IN VIDEO AND IN BROADBAND WE DON'T COMPETE WITH
> TIME WARNER. WE HAVE TO START WITH THAT VERY FUNDAMENTAL POINT. THEY'RE IN
> NY. WE'RE IN PHILADELPHIA. THEY'RE IN L.A., WE'RE IN SAN FRANCISCO. YOU
> CAN'T BUY A COMCAST IN NEW YORK, CAN'T BUY A TIME WARNER IN PHILADELPHIA. SO
> THERE'S NO REDUCTION IN COMPETITION.

Is that by chance? I wonder.

Here's a map of competition: [https://consumerist.com/2014/03/07/heres-what-
lack-of-broadb...](https://consumerist.com/2014/03/07/heres-what-lack-of-
broadband-competition-looks-like-in-map-form/)

Here's the Department of Commerce's study on competition [PDF]:
[http://esa.doc.gov/sites/default/files/competition-among-
us-...](http://esa.doc.gov/sites/default/files/competition-among-us-broadband-
service-providers.pdf)

> The typical person also has the option of choosing between three mobile
> broadband service providers at 10 Mbps. At even higher speeds, however, the
> number of providers drops off dramatically. For example, only 37 percent of
> the population had a choice of two or more providers at speeds of 25 Mbps or
> greater; only 9 percent had three or more choices. Moreover, four out of ten
> Americans did not live where very-high-speed broadband service – 100 Mbps or
> greater – is available. Of those with access to broadband at this speed
> level, only 8 percent had access to two or more providers; 1 percent had
> access to three or more. Only 3 percent of the population had 1 Gbps or
> greater available; none had two or more ISPs at that speed.

And no, satellite and wireless do not count as competition in broadband.
Sorry. Wireless is expensive, comes with very small data caps (unless you're
lucky enough to be grandfathered into old data plans), and there are NN
exceptions in wireless (e.g. TMobile). Satellite comes with low bandwidth,
higher latency, and higher costs.

Plus, according to the study, YOU'RE the one with inaccuracies. "For example,
only 37 percent of the population had a choice of two or more providers at
speeds of 25 Mbps or greater" 37% of the population is not a majority. If you
have updated stats, please link them.

The ideal here is to have 3+ for 98% of the country, with options such as:
municipal broadband, Comcast, Google Fiber, and Grande/Sonic/other regional
options.

~~~
treis
From your own cite:

>At download speeds of 3 megabits per second (Mbps), which is the Federal
Communications Commission’s current approximate standard for basic broadband
service, 98 percent of the population had a choice of at least two mobile ISPs
and 88 percent had two or more fixed ISPs available to them.

And you're doubling down on nonsense. There's no regional agreements not to
compete and your quote isn't any proof of it.

~~~
lovehashbrowns
> However, as multiple household members increasingly consume video streaming
> services music streaming, and online games, the adequate broadband speed bar
> has been raised. To understand just how slow 3 Mbps is, it takes about 2.25
> hours to download a 6 gigabyte movie. The same movie would only take 16
> minutes to download at 25 Mbps

The FCC later increased their definition:
[https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7932653/fcc-changed-
defin...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7932653/fcc-changed-definition-
broadband-25mbps)

We both know 3 Mbps isn't enough these days, and it hasn't been enough for
many years.

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/09/comca...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/09/comcast-says-its-too-expensive-to-compete-against-other-
cable-companies/)

The previous PDF I linked, from their FCC filing, discusses the reasons why
they don't compete with each other.

Sorry, I'm still stuck at work.

~~~
treis
Ok, I'm still not sure what your point is here. Even if we use a higher limit
my statement that most Americans have at least two companies to choose from is
accurate.

~~~
lovehashbrowns
37% is not most, though. And the choice is still between two shitty companies,
usually. Right now I have either Time Warner, I think Comcast (haven't checked
but probably), and Google Fiber. That, to me, is still not ideal. As I said in
my previous comment, the ideal would be two additional options for me: a
smaller, regional-based ISP, and a municipal ISP. Prior to Google Fiber, there
was no fiber at all here. I had to pay Time Warner $90 for 1/10th of what I
get with Google right now.

Just two companies is not ideal because, as we have seen before, Comcast, Time
Warner, AT&T, and Verizon don't compete enough to improve their
infrastructure. We've seen that just Google Fiber alone is enough to get the
current ISPs to drop their prices, improve speeds, and get Fiber going:
[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2015/04/googl...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2015/04/google-fiber-plans-expansion-then-twc-makes-speeds-six-
times-faster/)

But that's not enough. Google Fiber isn't ever going to spread enough to
become widely available, and I think they stopped altogether, didn't they?

Maybe if Google Fiber was planning to roll out everywhere in the US, I'd be
more okay with letting NN go but at this point, it's too risky IMO.

And I just want to make it clear that the ideal scenario is for competition to
determine ISP policies and behavior, not legislation. But we're not getting
competition any time soon, so I see legislation as a last resort.

------
mrgreenfur
His restaurant examples of the burden of regulations aren't exactly swaying me
here. Where are the examples of the burden the ISPs have had these last few
years? It seems like knee-jerk anti-regulation without any concern for the
specifics of the industry. In fact, these regulations should make it so
burdensome to start new ISPs, but instead they have entirely separate
legislation to prevent them.

------
clairity
this is a bit off-topic, but... ben makes a good point when he says
regulations is about trade-offs, but the kind of knee-jerk "i hate
regualations" sentiment in this article is a real turn off. case in point:

> "A classic example of this phenomenon is restaurants: who could possibly be
> against food safety? Then you read about how San Francisco requires 14
> permits that take 9 months to issue (plus a separate alcohol permit) and you
> wonder why anyone opens a restaurant at all (compounded by the fact that
> already-permitted restaurants have a vested interest in making the process
> more onerous over time). Multiply that burden by all of the restaurants that
> never get created and the cost is very large indeed."

yes, regulatory capture sucks, but y'know, just kinda maybe, most of those
restaurants that would have been created in a lax regluatory environment are
exactly the ones you don't want? the kind that don't care about structural
integrity or food safety or having a bathroom? he's focusing only on the
costs, not the benefits, to justify his argument that regulations are bad.
trade-offs have 2 sides: costs _and_ benefits.

the problem isn't the 14 permits (which represent the things we want) but the
9 months it takes the bureaucracy to issue them. that 9 months, representing
pure negative cash flow, is the onerous bit. make regulatory agencies
issue/deny permits within 2 business days (so maybe it takes a month to get
all your permits in place) and we won't see this kind of misplaced hate for
regulations.

------
michaelbuckbee
What worries me is that this is the easy to notice stuff that is brought up
(AT&T blocking Skype, etc.) what is really pernicious are things like network
"optimization" where there is a huge potential for abuse.

Want to influence the next election? Delay requests for a particular party's
website by 10s each.

Want to promote your new streaming service? Make competing ones timeout on
every 10th request.

Concerned about journalists writing bad articles about your company and your
abusive practices? Make their site take twice as long to load.

ISPs are in a position of immense power and in the US there is inadequate
competition for a pure market solution/consumer choice. This is something that
needs government protection.

~~~
cookiecaper
With you all the way until your last sentence, which seems to contradict the
rest. When there is an immense concentration of power and concern about shady
figures subtly influencing and corrupting things, the emphasis should be on
diffusing that power out over a variety of diverse vessels instead of
centralizing and condensing it further. Governmental apparatuses are just as,
if not more, susceptible to corruption and influence than commercial ones, and
I suspect the symbiotic relationship of regulatory capture and "government
oversight" plays a major role in the interest in maintaining the status quo.

The best answer to our telco issues is to use government influence to make
sure that the power is evenly dispersed among the people.

Babysitting the 5-6 major entrenched players is a stopgap at best and probably
just a waste of time. Have to change the market circumstances so that the
natural fluid, self-healing, and self-monitoring rhythm of the free market is
in full swing.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
So, I'm in agreement, but I'm not sure how to get from here to there. I think
I'd rather a stopgap solution than one that would put me in a bad spot for the
next decade+ while deep infrastructure issues are addressed.

What I really wish is that Internet was just another boring utility like
electric or gas.

------
vxxzy
Really the argument is what type of service do these companies provide? It
should forever be just a "dumb data pipe". Many interests are attempting to
bastardize this and call the Service something else to eek out more profit.

I as a consumer should simply be able to purchase "access". That is, I should
be able to purchase a pre-defined pipe from my provider. I should be allowed
to pass as much traffic in and out that pipe as much as possible to any
destination without discrimination. If the ISP sells me a pipe @10Mbps then I
should be able to fully utilize it (save for latency/jitter/loss to
destinations, etc..). I am paying to pass _data_. It is akin to my power
company, I am paying for electricty (say 200 Amp service). My ISP should only
look at it as _data_ and nothing more. The moment they put their fingers into
my _data_ they are not supplying me a service I paid for.

~~~
djrogers
That's a pipe dream - there are no services built this way, not even the
electric grid you referenced. If everyone in your neighborhood fully utilized
their 200A service, guess what happens? Yeah, you all lose power.

ISPs are built the same way - resources are built out to provide service
levels acceptable to most customers most of the time, but they can't be built
so everyone gets all of their bandwidth all of the time and still be sold at
consumer prices.

------
blntechie
> In other words, it wasn’t a net neutrality issue at all: it was an early
> prototype of what is known as “zero-rating.”

I read and agree with most of what Ben writes but he is grossly wrong here.
How is 'zero rating' not a net neutrality issue?

He justifies it by saying

1) It is common across the world and 2) It helped mobile carrier industry to
be competitive.

On #1, some countries have banned 'zero rating'(e.g. India) under net
neutrality laws.

On #2, it was not only zero rating which helped T-Mobile and the industry to
be competitive. It was primarily because of BYOD and getting rid of contracts
when buying a new phone.

------
doke01
"...it wasn’t a net neutrality issue at all: it was an early prototype of what
is known as “zero-rating.”"

Zero-rating is a net neutrality issue. It gives preference to one service over
others.

------
tcd
You post this when india just got the toughest laws on Net Neutrality in the
world [1]. This guy is clearly fishing for clicks (outrageous headline!) and
wants to invite the trolls to comment pages.

He's not right, he never has been, and never will be. And the idiots that
upvoted this are also idiots.

[1]: [https://redd.it/7g3aaq](https://redd.it/7g3aaq)

------
burkaman
The only argument here is "it might not be necessary, so it's not worth the
costs." Can anyone think of any actual costs? Unfortunately there is no
substance in the "THE COST OF REGULATION" section.

~~~
emiliobumachar
New ISPs will have to, from day one and on top of all other laws and
regulations they need to follow, comply, and be able to demonstrate
compliance, with net neutrality.

People with more of a network background will please chip in whether this is
easy?

Also, more speculatory:

Free-you're-the-product services are dominant in large swaths of the internet.
Free-and-you-don't-pay-for-the-bits-you're-still-the-product could be up-and-
coming, but Net Neutrality regulation would kill it off as obviously evil. Who
knows, it could be an essential stepping stone towards people being _paid_ for
all the data they feed tech companies. Maybe Net Neutrality will lock in free-
you're-the-product indefinitely.

~~~
timthelion
Obviously complying with net neutrality, unless the law is stupidly written,
is trivial. Compliance simply means blindly passing on tcp/ip packets without
looking at to whom and where they are going. The only way to fail to comply is
if you actively stop a packet and say "hey there, pay a toll to go through".
There is negative cost to compliance, failure to comply requires an extra
layer of technology.

------
FascinatedBox
I really hate what seems to me a new trend of co-opting terms to muddy the
waters and confuse the issues. This guy is not in support of NN. That's it.

Ideally we'd have so much ISP competition that NN wouldn't need be as
necessary because the first company to propose splitting up the net would be
laughed out of business.

But we've screwed that up, because there's hardly any ISP competition in
America. NN makes sure they don't split up the net. Because we've seen before
that they don't really care about the end consumer.

------
lordCarbonFiber
An article completly broken by it's fundamental assumption; a NN internet is
some how _more_ expensive than a non NN one.

What impossible regulatory burden is the FCC really applying to the _poor_
ISPs? The reason NN has been the default for all these decades is it's _more_
work to manually inspect packets to provide these artificial tiers of service
and the ISP gravy train is way too good as it is to risk exposing their
monopolies to consumer outrage.

The internet is a utility as much as electricity, and yet you don't see the
power companies saying it's important for ~competition~ to charge variable
rates for your power delivery (though, recent advances means this is possible
so, once NN is killed expect Grid Neutrality to be next).

Sacrifice the internet for profit for all I care, just don't fucking try to
say it's a good thing for consumers.

------
NickGerleman
I find it alarming, and somewhat ironic, this article was removed from HN
temporarily for it being repeatedly flagged. I don't fully agree with the
article, but using a mechanism to prevent abuse to hide an opinion that you
disagree with is akin to the forms of censorship net neutrality is meant to
prevent.

~~~
thehardsphere
Welcome to the HN echo chamber.

------
crankylinuxuser
Yawn. Another libertarian who believes "The Market will Regulate itself." No
matter how much proof you have to the contrary, you'll still have those
claiming less regulations are better.

Companies exist to make money. "Social Good" they claim are facades. Because
at the end of the day, if "Illegal_fine*percentage_caught < Illegal Gains",
they're going to do it. And we have not much further to look than
Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Apple/Facebook about that. And wouldn't ya know, those
are the big players on the Internet, the least regulated thing across the
world.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
EDIT: deleted

~~~
crankylinuxuser
Right now, they already do.

With NN gone, you could have Facebook not just paying to zero-rate traffic,
but to actively "double-rate" or "elimi-nate" traffic to competitors.

Hard to get in if your traffic's killed weeks or months in. And it makes
acquisition nice and cheap - "Well, nobody's using your services, I'll give
you $50k".

~~~
cookiecaper
This is already how it is _de-facto_. Anyone who has done web promotion knows
that if Google decides you shouldn't get traffic anymore, you don't get
traffic anymore. Platform control is at the center of every tech company's
goal because it makes them the kingmakers, and if there's a killer new feature
from an up-and-coming startup, they can and will shamelessly copy it into
their platform and neuter the startup in the next release. Getting "Netscaped"
is just routine business in tech now.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
Yep. And its treated as a "Rights issue" with the respective companies whom do
this. Of course, only the behemoths' rights are protected.

    
    
          "Google's not required to index your site."
          "Facebook isn't required to allow you to talk to people."
          "Microsoft doesn't have to allow your website to exist on Azure."
          "Amazon disagreed with your business plan as it competes with them. You're kicked off AWS."
    

Sure, they have the "right" to maintain their business. The problem is, when
they run as Kingmaker, they should be held to a higher standard of law. We
already have this jurisprudence, known as Tortuous Interference.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference)
. Lets start enforcing it, when they do things like "Interfere/Clone/Absorb"
or "Embrace/Enhance/Extinguish".

Getting "Netscaped" should qualify under Tortious Interference, and should
bring swift remedies. Because when the big players provide a stable interface
and set of service, without discrimination, that levels the playing field for
more players to get in and do cool things. With their Axe hanging over others
heads, why bother playing the game?

------
Chardok
Honestly I would have no issues with this if we actually had competition. My
state forbids local municipalities from forming internet companies, so I am
left with a single speed from cable company or a single speed, half of the
cable companies, from ATT with data caps.

I can guarantee the cable company will all of a sudden charge more, for the
same service, by tacking on tiered plans, while doing _nothing_ to upgrade
reliability, bandwidth, or really anything. Why would they? Where can one go,
when ATT will do the exact same thing.

Ajit is wrong, based on the assumption that the free market will correct this
issue.

------
giacaglia
Is this right given that ISPs have local monopolies?

~~~
zwerdlds
Yeah, the whole comparison to T-Mobile is baseless.

------
whowouldathunk
You need electricity to power everything you do online. I don't think anyone
would support being charged different rates based on what you plug into a
power outlet.

~~~
djrogers
And yet here we are - [https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-
plan-o...](https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-
options/electric-vehicle-base-plan/electric-vehicle-base-plan.page)

~~~
whowouldathunk
Wow. And this:

[https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/save-energy-
money/help...](https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/save-energy-money/help-
paying-your-bill/longer-term-assistance/medical-condition-related/medical-
baseline-allowance/medical-baseline-allowance.page)

I really don't want utilities making value judgements for me.

------
bo1024
I'm surprised this is getting so many upvotes, there are a lot of problems
with the statements and arguments in the article.

It almost entirely rests on a bogeyman of high "costs of regulation", with no
argument or evidence that these costs under NN are actually high. NN is
trivial to comply with and we've had two years under it but no evidence
presented that it is burdensome.

Then, many of the arguments boil down to "Net neutrality is good, but
regulation is too costly so let's hope the free market enforces net neutrality
on its own without regulations." This is backed up by a claim that there have
not been systematic violations of net neutrality, but this does not match the
facts and has been addressed multiple times in this thread.

Also, the author several times incorrectly claims that zero-rating does not
violate net neutrality, but actually, it is one of the primary examples of a
violation. Perhaps they are confused with the fact that cellular companies
like T-Mobile are not classified as common carriers? But this refutes one of
the main points: For companies like T-Mobile not subject to NN rules, we do
see systematic violations of NN, for example, zero-rating.

------
uiri
So the author is saying "look at this thing which people say violates net
neutrality but not the net neutrality regulations as written" and uses that as
an argument to get rid of the net neutrality regulations altogether? Does this
make sense to anyone else? Zero rating is equivalent to charging more for non-
zero-rated bandwidth.

------
croon
> Equally difficult to measure is the inevitable rent-seeking that accompanies
> regulation, as incumbents find it easier to lobby regulators to foreclose
> competition instead of winning customers in an open market.

Yeah, really strong move by Pai, going against all ISPs wishes to keep Net
Neutrality.

This story does not compute in its own logic.

------
popcornarsonist
> _Remember that ISPs bear massive fixed costs, which means they are motivated
> to maximize the number of end users. That means not cutting off sites and
> apps those customers want. Moreover, even in the worst case scenario where
> ISPs did decide to charge Google and Netflix and whatnot, they could price
> discriminate and charge the Netflix competitor nothing at all!_

I don't really get this argument. If the ISPs are able to get another revenue
stream from content providers, such as Netflix, etc, then this doesn't really
follow. There could even be a world where they care more about content
providers than consumer! Also: they're not necessarily going to "cut off"
these other apps, they could simply throttle them, making that app seem to
work poorly. So, the consumer just stays with Netflix, who is paying the ISP.

------
EGreg
_" So to recount: one Portugal story is made up, and the other declared that a
10GB family plan with an extra 10GB for a collection of apps of your choosing
for €25/month ($30/month) is a future to be feared;"_

So, to recount: this author doesn't understand the concept of phasing
something in, and thinks that if something doesn't appear all at once then it
will never appear.

------
abvdasker
This guy is not in favor of Net Neutrality.

This piece is striking for it's clever dishonesty. He says he believes in NN
while arguing in favor of zero-rating, which is by definition contrary to NN.

Dude totally ignores the fact that during the growth phase of the internet
ISPs like Comcast and Time Warner did not also own major internet content and
therefore had little incentive to be anticompetitive (HBO and Hulu).

------
exabrial
> "And, I’d add, if neutrality and foreclosed competition are the issue net
> neutrality proponents say they are, then Google and Facebook are even bigger
> concerns than ISPs: both are super-aggregators with unprecedented power and
> the deepest moats ever seen in technology, and an increasing willingness to
> not be neutral."

I've advocated this is a much larger threat

------
orf
"We promise we won't systematically abuse this, we double promise with a
cherry on top. But we need to be able to, for reasons. But we won't. Swear
down. But the option is nice, you know?"

~~~
eksu
I can’t tell if you’re talking about the FCC promising Forbearance with Title
II classification, or if you’re talking about ISPs.

~~~
metalliqaz
He's talking about the ISPs.

------
r3bl
1\. QZ (nor Tim Wu) never claimed that the screenshot in their article is from
Portugal. That false premise alone takes a significant amount of introduction
to the article. In fact, QZ's article even explains the same thing that this
article does (see my second point).

2\. I completely agree with the author that the Portugal example is a bad one.
That example shows zero rating, not "pay $5 to access certain websites", as
most people assume once it circulates through the NN debate. Still
problematic, but not as quite as those who share it make it seem. "Pay $5 to
use social media" and "pay $5 to use your data plan for anything you want and
have additional data specifically for social media" is not the same.

3\. I disagree with the overall premise of the article (that Pai is right) and
there was nothing in this article to prove me otherwise. It puts into a
question the FCC decision from 2015. Okay, understood. But I fail to see what
the author thinks is the appropriate action _after_ the 2015 decision gets
reverted. As such, my belief that the 2015 decision shouldn't get reverted is
still going strong.

------
zaksoup
Re: food safety...

> Ayn Rand and Ron Paul walk into a bar. The bartender serves them tainted
> alcohol. They die. The market reacts and the bar closes because nobody goes
> there anymore. Ayn Rand and Ron Paul are still dead.

~~~
nickpp
The bar has some stairs where you could fall and break your neck. Do you need
a government regulation outlawing stairs in bars?

Bar furniture could break and impale you. Should the bar have a furniture-
owning license where they need to learn how to maintain their chairs?

And absurd made up examples can go on...

~~~
zaksoup
[https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_tab...](https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=interpretations&p_id=24960)

Well...

Also, let’s be clear that regulations about the bar for food quality you will
commercially sell to others and what you do in your own home (the furniture
example) is obviously a false comparison. Besides the OSHA case for handrails
there is, in fact, rules and regulations around the quality of, for instance,
mattresses and their potential for catching fire.

Ultimately my point is that there is a clear and fundamental difference
between regulating what you can sell commercially and what you do in your own
home. In addition there is plenty of precedent (and good reason) for
regulation that you used as some sort of straw man but in fact actively
reduces injury and makes businesses more accessible and available to more
customers.

~~~
nickpp
Yeah I remember California’s fire-retardant regulation, which turned out to be
a carcinogen. More regulations solved that too.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cancer-linked-
fla...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cancer-linked-flame/)

------
TurbineSeaplane
Well, at least it's a nice break from the incessant talk about Facebook from
Ben.

I think his newsletter could be renamed "facebookanalysis.com"

------
Grue3
Just a single look at the governments who actually do regulate their Internet
will lead you to the same conclusion. You don't want your Internet to be like
Portugal? Is China or Russia more of your taste? As someone who lives in
Russia, I would never trust the government to regulate the Internet. It's
obvious what this control will end up being used for. You should be thankful
that Trump of all people doesn't want to control your Internet.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
So your argument is essentially that, given the way Russia enforces laws, you
rather wouldn't want governments enforcing laws?

~~~
Grue3
Do you think Russia enforces its laws in any special way or what? No, there
are just more laws to enforce. First make everything illegal, then put anyone
you don't like behind bars.

Don't give your government more tools to oppress you, is what would be my
advice.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> Do you think Russia enforces its laws in any special way or what?

Yes, very much so.

> No, there are just more laws to enforce. First make everything illegal, then
> put anyone you don't like behind bars.

Which already is telling you that it's not the rule of law. Selective
enforcement is not a thing that should exist under the rule of law, and it
exists to a much lesser extent in other countries.

> Don't give your government more tools to oppress you, is what would be my
> advice.

Well, that's fine. But the solution is not to therefore have a powerless
government. Because if your government is powerless, others will take over and
oppress you instead. Power doesn't care whether it is exercised by what is
nominally your government or any other entity that can in fact exercise power.

The solution to oppression is to keep power distributed, and government
absolutely can be a very helpful entity in keeping a healthy power balance. In
this case, ISPs want to use the power they have due to their monopolistic
position to oppress their customers and internet companies, which is a case
where balancing that power of the ISPs with power from the government is a
pretty good idea.

Also, I think you might be confusing network neutrality regulation with
network content regulation, which are two very different things, if not polar
opposites. If you don't have network neutrality, that creates an environment
where ISPs can in fact just implement content regulation at will, be it for
their own uses, for advertisers, or also as a service they can sell to the
government. Network neutrality, on the other hand, is what allows one or two
branches of the government to stop anyone else from doing any of that,
including the other branches of the government.

~~~
libertyEQ
Only the government has the power of 'legitimate violence' so they have to be
considered in a different manner.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Really, "the power of legitimate violence" doesn't compute. If someone has the
actual power to use violence against the population, what difference does it
make whether it is somehow nominally illegitimate? Giving all the power to
private corporations is not a solution to that problem, because then those
corporations ultimately will also end up with the power to use violence. Your
only hope is to keep power distributed.

------
zeep
anyone with common sense know that this is false... it would break the
internet if ISPs would take advantage of the absence of a net neutrality
requirement. I think that whoever passed this law gave the ISPs a pretty bad
idea (not that the law is bad).

------
gormo2
Ajit Pai did nothing wrong and shouldn't be attacked with as much personal
vitriol as we're seeing.

~~~
dd36
He’s on the verge of turning the internet into cable TV. That necessitates
significant attack. And he seems to be doing so for personal gain. His
supposed justifications are demonstrably false.

------
manderson89
I have a few issues with his reasoning.

> "The most famous example of an ISP acting badly was a company called Madison
> River Communication ... Vonage quickly complained to the FCC, which quickly
> obtained a consent decree that included a nominal fine and guarantee from
> Madison River Communications that they would not block such services again."

Basically his defense of the old regulatory framework in this instance is that
the FCC took action. I don't have much confidence that Ajit Pai would have the
FCC take action if he were faced with this same scenario.

> "Another popularly cited case is Comcast’s attempted throttling of
> BitTorrent in 2007 ... The FCC ordered Comcast to stop in 2008"

Once again his defense of the old framework is that the FCC will take action
should this scenario recur. Chairman Pai doesn't exactly engender confidence
in his willingness to take on ISPs.

> "if the furor over net neutrality has demonstrated anything, it is that the
> media is ready-and-willing to raise a ruckus if ISPs even attempt to do
> something untoward"

So the author acknowledges that what the ISPs are trying to do with net
neutrality is "untoward"? Not sure why he's written this article then... But
even so, what good has that furor caused? It has become clear that the ISPs
are going to succeed regardless of the ruckus. So this doesn't really support
the idea that the media can successfully regulate ISPs.

> "it is an acknowledgment that ISPs can and will self-regulate."

The author may be right that they can and HAVE self-regulated in the past.
That does not mean they WILL self regulate in the future.

> "ISPs bear massive fixed costs, which means they are motivated to maximize
> the number of end users."

Not exactly. They are motivated to maximize profits. Maximizing the number of
end users is certainly part of the equation, but monopolies tend to engage in
other profit maximizing practices such as price discrimination (which is
mentioned shortly after this in the article). However the author seems to
assume that ISPs will only engage in price discrimination with regards to
companies, and not consumers ("they could price discriminate and charge the
Netflix competitor nothing at all!"). I find that unlikely. It is not
unreasonable to think that blocking user access to some sites unless the user
purchases a certain "package" will be used in service of price discrimination.

> "Ajit Pai is right to RETURN REGULATION [emphasis added] to the same light
> touch under which the Internet developed and broadband grew for two
> decades."

In my opinion this is a false equivalency. Though it may nominally be the same
regulatory framework, there are differences between the regulatory environment
then and now; primarily the FCC's and Chairman Pai's willingness to take on
ISPs and support the principles of Net Neutrality.

------
jklowden
The article attempts to make logical arguments from false premises.

* _What makes evaluating regulations so difficult is that the benefits are usually readily apparent ... but the costs are much more difficult to quantify_ Why should that be so? The actual costs of implementing and conforming to a regulation are easier to measure than the benefits. The benefit of NN is harder to quantify than the cost of enforced nondiscrimination.

 _future innovations ... are far more difficult to calculate_ Predictions are
hard, especially about the future. If some future innovations are difficult to
predict consequent to a regulation, others are hard to predict in its absence.

* _regulation always has a cost far greater than what we can see at the moment it is enacted_ Why should that be so? Because we can't know the future? If that's the case, it's equally true for benefits: we can't know the full benefit of a regulation, either, because not all the behaviors it forestalls have been invented yet.

It has been estimated that many EPA regulations have benefits worth 100 times
their cost. Those benefits far exceed EPA's original estimates.

A regulation is a law. We hear a lot about them as "bad" because corporations
have the money and time to complain about them in the press and to congress.
They say the problem is costs, but when it comes to intangible goods like
banking and communications, the "problem" is often the regulator's
interference with the corporation's ability to exploit imperfect information.
If you don't think your phone company or credit card is two steps ahead of
you, read your terms of agreement sometime.

Good regulations squeeze out bad actors. Worldcom did significant damage to
AT&T and their customers: by publishing fraudulent financials, it pushed AT&T
to make deep cuts to services that -- by honest accounting -- were profitable
and competitively priced.

A good contemporary example is airline pricing. Not long ago, the price you
paid for you ticket was the price for getting from A to B. Then the airlines
started charging for drinks, then food, and now bags. The real price can be
$100 more than the published price. When searching for fares, there's no way
to look for an "all in" price, so all airlines are forced into this deceptive
model. Only regulation could successfully return us to a normal system where
the price is the price.

The Internet exists because of taxpayer-sponsored research to create standards
and place them in the public domain. Anyone who used MCI Mail or Compuserv or
Prodigy knows what a privatized Internet would look like.

The idea that the telephone company (or cable company) should be allowed to
determine, in any way, how we use their service or what we use their service
for has no analog in any other industry, which is why every supporting
argument is specious or disingenuous or just false.

------
rubyn00bie
Ajit Pai is wrong and so is the author. He’s confusing safety and soundness
regulation with economic regulation, and incorrectly asserting they’re equal.
They are not.

Net neutrality is about the safety and soundness of the internet. What he’s
saying is “hey it has been okay so regulation is bad until we have to have it.
Because all regulation is bad.” That’s a pretty fucked and ignorant way of
looking at regulation in my opinion.

It’s quite sad to see this getting upvotes.

~~~
sctb
> _It’s quite sad to see this getting upvotes._

Upvotes don't necessarily mean agreement, it means that the community is
interested in discussing the contents of the article. And including jabs like
this does nothing but worsen that discussion.

~~~
kodablah
I'm afraid the "flag" feature has been abused to mean disagreement in this
case sadly. Hopefully the article becomes unflagged.

EDIT: no longer flagged, yay.

~~~
grzm
Without asking the members who clicked "flag", it's hard to know why they did
so. I can think of at least three other reasons why users may have flagged it
besides disagreement: there have been quite a few submissions on the topic
already and they've had enough of the topic for now; whether or not they agree
with the topic or think it needs to be discussed, they don't think HN is a
constructive place for such a discussion; they don't think the given
submission has anything to add to what's already been discussed. Please note
that I'm not saying that any of these are why members flagged it. I'm just
suggesting it's not useful to jump to a particular conclusion without more
information. In this case, I don't think it's possible to know definitively
given the information at hand.

------
bshur
no he's fucking not

------
mtgx
So many things wrong in that article, I don't know where to begin.

I will begin with the part where he contradicts himself in the article,
implying the Portugal style zero-rating is no big deal in the first half of
the article, and then saying zero-rating could potentially be the biggest
threat in the second half.

The second stuff he's wrong about is he conflates (poor) European country
prices with the U.S. prices, so from his point of view it looks like the
Portuguse have sort of a "first world problem" when they complain that the
_next_ 10GB costs only 5 euro if they buy an app package.

His mistake here is that he's not putting things into the local context. Many
European countries have 1Gbps cable internet that costs somewhere around 15-30
euro. To Americans that looks "dirt cheap". But to the people in those
countries it's just regular prices. It's not cheap for them, which is why most
have stuck on the "much slower" 100 Mbps lines and such. So saying that
Portuguese don't have anything to whine about because their internet is
already "cheap" or whatever, is just wrong.

Another thing is that today's 1GB data plan is tomorrow's 10GB data plan on
mobile devices. Data usage is exploding. Without net neutrality (and strong
competition), ISPs could leave everyone on the 1GB plan 5 years later, even
though they now need 10GB of data for their daily needs, while overcharging
them for "app packages".

This way, carriers could move us from a world of "I can visit 100% of the
internet on my data plan" to "I can visit only 10% of the internet on my data
plan..for the other 90% I will have to buy various data packages, where the
internet is split into groups of services."

And again, competition IS the ultimately solution. But net neutrality is there
to ensure things don't go terrible when there isn't any competition. If the US
wants to get rid of net neutrality, then it should _first_ try to foster much
stronger competition at a local level. Then we can begin discussing the repeal
of net neutrality, if still necessary.

Also, Ben must have a short memory. Before the previous FCC started arguing
for net neutrality, Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon started _slowing down_ Netflix
and Youtube. I was constantly seeing people on Reddit complaining that their
50 Mbps Comcast connections can't seem to handle the 3Mbps Netflix traffic.

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/02/netfl...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/02/netflix-performance-on-verizon-and-comcast-has-been-
dropping-for-months/)

But seriously, do we really need to spell out why the U.S. ISPs want to get
rid of net neutrality? Does Ben actually believe that the ISPs are doing this
because the rules have been "oh so hard on them"? Or is it because they want
to screw the consumers nine ways to heaven, and having no rules in place, just
like when they repealed the privacy framework recently banning them from
collecting user data, will help them do that?

------
ryanwaggoner
EDIT: deleted

~~~
s73ver_
Yes, competition would be nice. And you won't find a single NN proponent who
would be opposed to increasing competition.

But you know what? That's a completely orthogonal argument. Because we do not
currently live in a world with that level of competition, and repealing NN
would do absolutely nothing to change that. Not an iota. The world we
currently live in, is one where the vast majority of Americans have access to
maybe one or two broadband providers. There is no competition. You can argue
why that is, but in reality, it doesn't matter. There is not competition, and
there won't be for quite some time. So if you repeal NN now, you repeal NN in
that anti-competitive environment. There is nothing preventing the things that
you claim won't happen, but have absolutely nothing but the "good faith" of
the ISPs to go on.

You want to increase competition. We all do. But please don't make the mistake
of repealing NN before that happens. It will do nothing but strengthen the
incumbent ISPs, making it that much harder to compete with them. Instead, work
for policies like Local Loop Unbundling, or municipal broadband. Then, after
we've created a competitive market, then look at NN.

