
Net Neutrality: John McCain introduces bill to stop it - spoiledtechie
http://mashable.com/2009/10/22/john-mccain-wants-to-block-fccs-net-neutrality-rules/
======
benofsky
I'm not going to be very popular for saying this however to be honest net
neutrality is not currently a problem. So why fix it? Even if John McCain's
stated reasons for introducing this bill are completely idiotic and ignorant,
to me what the FCC is introducing seems like unnecessary legislation.

If net neutrality becomes a problem, the market will react people will stop
using ISP X, if all the ISPs do it then the government should intervene but it
is not currently a problem.

I don't live in the US though so if I'm missing something please tell me.

~~~
camccann
One thing you're missing is that for the most part there is no substantial
competitive market for broadband internet in the USA. For many people, their
choices are "put up with what the ISP offers" or "use dial-up".

As for the necessity, the whole thing was sparked because of stuff that
telecom executives actually talked about, so it's not completely speculative,
just somewhat preemptive.

------
haseman
-sarcasm- I, for one, support net neutrality. I can't wait for the people who brought us the amazing FCC to regulate the hell out of the internet. Maybe while they're at it they could stop me from getting rick-rolled so much... -/sarcasm-

I'm skeptical of politicians...which is exactly why I support the concept of
net neutrality but I could never support letting the US Government enforce it.

~~~
fuzzmeister
Since net neutrality does not seem to be in the economic best interest of the
ISPs and wireless carriers, government is likely the only way to enforce it.

~~~
haseman
Better the devil I know (corporate greed) than the devil I don't (lobbyist
driven re-election hungry politicians)

In the same way, the government has exactly zero economic interest in a
correctly regulated network. Over time, laws have a way of favoring those who
are connected over those who are not... Goldman Sachs springs to mind as an
example of just such behavior.

~~~
bluedanieru
I consider government "the devil I know" at least compared to corporations
like Verizon and Comcast. I may have little say in the functioning of American
government, but I have precisely zero say in the operations of large
corporations. It seems self-defeating to abandon the only measure of societal
control all citizens have equal access to, because of some cynicism of
politics.

~~~
jacoblyles
Your purchasing decision probably means more to Verizon or Comcast than your
vote does to an average bureaucrat. "Large" corporations are dwarfed in size
by the US government, which is the largest corporation in the world.

------
jsz0
Nothing new here. Be skeptical of politicians who constantly talk about how
they are above influence from lobbyists. It's a good way to cover your tracks.
It's called Double Think and it works really well.

------
icey
Arizona politicians have seriously gone off the deep end this year. I gotta
get out of this state - who's hiring?

~~~
tptacek
Dunno. I think reasonable people could disagree about the net neutrality
issue. A stand against it is pretty consistent with basic conservatism.

~~~
grellas
The basic free market case against net neutrality rules is articulated pretty
well here:
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020448830457442...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204488304574427170618003020.html).

~~~
ubernostrum
I stopped reading at this line:

"The new policy is a big political victory for Google and other Web content
providers whose business model depends on free-loading off the huge capital
investments in broadband made by others."

Anyone who could write that either is not in possession of the facts, or has
chosen to disregard the facts. Lies and inaccuracies do not a cogent argument
make.

Unless I'm misunderstanding, and your point was to claim that free-market
arguments must be based on lies?

~~~
tptacek
Instead of just saying "liar, liar", maybe you yourself could form a cogent
argument about how the article is wrong.

I'm likely to agree with the argument you come up with. I'm just pointing out:
you haven't come up with anything yet.

~~~
camccann
Google pays for internet connection to their servers. Google's users pay for
their own internet connections, in order to have access to websites (such as
Google). Calling Google a free-loader when not only is it already paying for
what it uses, but when its existence itself contributes substantially to the
value of connecting to the internet is beyond wildly inaccurate and wandering
into either delusion or dishonesty.

It'd be like getting three paragraphs into a scientific paper and finding a
reference to creationism as "a scientific theory with strong support"; it
undermines the credibility of the article so badly that it's not unreasonable
to question the value of reading further.

~~~
tptacek
First, Google "probably" doesn't buy bandwidth on a level playing field with
the rest of the market (people have tried to suss this out of their financial
disclosures, but it's also common sense).

Second, Google buys a specific kind of bandwidth. Last mile costs dominate
over backbone costs.

Finally, and from a political perspective most simply: they're AT&T's
circuits, AT&T's DSLAMs, AT&T's routers, and AT&T's operating expenditures.
They should be able to do with them what they want.

On that last point, even though I support net neutrality, I sympathize pretty
strongly with the argument. At what point does the government get to say "your
business is so important that we're going to start regulating how you price it
even though you operate in a competitive market"?

I want to say clearly that I agree with you that Google isn't in fact
"freeloading", and I think the argument the op-ed makes for that claim is
dubious. But I don't think you can declare, cut-and-dry, that it's a bad-faith
argument.

~~~
ubernostrum
Last mile costs do indeed dominate. But, last I checked, _I_ pay for that in
the form of a monthly fee to my ISP to provide service to my apartment. So
nobody's "freeloading" here.

As for why neutrality is a good thing, well, the simple argument is that I've
paid $X/mo. for a particular service. That service is an Internet connection
at a certain speed and up to a certain amount of data transferred. Not "an
Internet connection unless I use Skype or watch lots of Youtube videos, in
which case it gets throttled -- sorry, 'quality-ensured' -- down to a
trickle".

And that's as it should be, because that's what fosters innovation: if new and
interesting uses for an Internet connection have to contend with throttling
and degradation imposed by companies which are _already being paid to provide
the bandwidth_ , well, it seems to me that there won't be nearly so much
innovation.

Is that reasonable grounds for regulation? History seems to think so; we've
been enforcing common-carrier status on various related fields for quite a
while now, and it doesn't seem to have caused floods of lawsuits or hampered
innovation or infrastructure as the free-market argument says it should. And
it should of course be noted that the cozy relationship AT&T had with the
government (which regulated the hell out of it for many years) made it
profitable enough to sink huge amounts of money into R&D, giving us Bell Labs,
etc., further putting the lie to the free-market argument.

And, of course, that's without getting into things like subsidies provided to
telecommunications companies to get them to build out infrastructure (since
one consistent claim is that there's just not enough bandwidth to go around,
this is particularly relevant) -- so far as I can tell, they've yet to hold up
their end of that bargain, but I think the people who've had to foot the bill
for them have a right to expect them to.

~~~
rudin
"an Internet connection unless I use Skype or watch lots of Youtube videos, in
which case it gets throttled -- sorry, 'quality-ensured' -- down to a trickle"

I'd love if I could get an internet connection like this, provided it was
substantially cheaper. Now you may think this is silly as why don't I just buy
a lower data cap. The problem is I live with people with whom it is very hard
to enforce any sane usage policy on. We go over our cap regularly. Now if I
could "outsource" the enforcement to the ISP that would be different.

