Net Neutrality

[samgreco]

Having dealt with Comcast and AT&T on billing issues and the like I don't trust either of them to do a good job, let alone, do what's right. It took me 6 months to fix a problem with Comcast that would have cost me $500. And the only way I got it fixed was because I knew someone up the chain at Comcast. I did my best for 6 months to fix the problem through normal channels. Finally, one email to this person and in 24 hours, problem gone. With an admission that it was their fault. If I didn't know him, I would never have won that battle.

How is this better than the government?

AT&T is certainly no better and probably worse. Those are currently my only 2 choices for business class internet. Consumer class adds Clear. That's it. And I am in the Chicago metro area.

But the hidden NN issue that I never see discussed is the possibility, that left unchecked, my small business website could get throttled because someone like BestBuy with their GeekSquids could pay Comcast and AT&T to make sure my site just doesn't load well. Or blocks Google's robots from crawling my site so that I get indexed and people can find me in searches. Big guys win, I don't. Free market? Ha!

Finally, WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT. It's our own damn fault for not pushing our faces into theirs to tell them what we want and what we'll do if we don't get it. Giant Mega-Corporations have the ears of congress, we have nothing. Because we are quiet.

And remember, DMCA and the like only exist because big money corps put the screws to their congress folk to make it happen. All of these bad regulations out there are because they are NOT being done for us.

OK, I think I better stop now...

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

At the same time, I also believe that businesses have proven time and again that a lack of oversight can lead to unfair, illegal, and monopolistic practices. (See Microsoft antitrust, Intel antitrust, Google antitrust, CD price fixing, Comcast throttling, etc.)

I worked at IBM back when it was really the only computer game in town. IBM and AT&T were both brought up on monopoly charges by the government. AT&T lost the case and was broken up involuntarily. IBM won the case and ended up dissolving and breaking up anyway. Both lawsuits were a total waste of money and cost the companies being sued millions of dollars (that was passed on to the consumer.) Do you really think if AT&T had won the case there would be no competion in the communication industry today and we'd all still be using rotary dial phones? Do you think if IBM had lost the case the computer industry would look much different today?

Consumers vote with their wallet and sooner or later any company that is doing things that are illegal, unfair and monopolistic will change or go out of business. I don't want to govenment protecting me, I want them to get a lot smaller. I can deal with companies that get big, greedy and do stupid things because they eventually change or go away. I can't deal with continued government expansion because they never go away.

[Taddeusz]

But if there are no other choices or no other realistic choices then you are forced to use their service or do without.

Such is the case with broadband internet in most areas. Sure, there is some competition (read very little) but for the most part they are either monopolies or oligopolies. The choices are quite limited. Here in OKC you have either Cox Cable or AT&T DSL. IMHO, DSL is not a real option. In my experience the service is sub par and speed is nowhere near, and can never be anywhere near, that of cable. The only real choice then is Cox Cable who, IMHO, has excellent service. I have never had any major issues with them that weren't solved by the end of the day if not an hour or so. But if I didn't like either of those choices there really isn't much else out there. Sure I could get Direct Way satellite service but that is slow and expensive. So I would be left with nothing.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Tiki

I must say that Comcast's recent acquisition of NBC-Universal is very frightening. In the absence of Net Neutraility laws it wouldn't surprise me at all if Comcast decided to start throttling video streaming services other than its own. Without regulation, there is nothing to prevent them from re-directing web searches to its own sites (e.g. imagine if I type in Netflix.com and my browser goes to fancast.com instead, or instead imagine it takes me to a landing page with a message that says, "your plan does not allow access to this site. Please click here and you will be charged $0.05 per MB to access this service).

This is precisely the issue. When the same corporation that owns the wires into your house is also a major provider of content, that's not a free market. A free market requires that all providers have equal access to those wires, and paradoxical as it may seem, it takes government regulation to ensure that freedom.

Consider the (wired) phone system as a historical example. When AT&T owned everything from end to end, choices were limited and service was crap. Today's competitive market for phone products and services could not emerge until the government stepped in to divorce the owners of the wires from the equipment and service providers. (So yes, Tom, I do really think that if AT&T still ruled the telecom universe, we'd have a lot fewer choices than we have now. The IBM case isn't really comparable because competitors didn't need IBM's permission to sell into their market, whereas AT&T's competitors did need access to the wires.)

Net neutrality is the same idea. If you want a competitive market for Internet services and content, then the communications channels have to be equally accessible to all providers. I guarantee you the carriers will not do that if left unregulated; they'll stack the deck in their own favor in order to squeeze out competition.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I can't deal with continued government expansion because they never go away.

It's simply not true that government regulation never goes away. Free-market ideologues have spent the last couple of decades systematically dismantling the banking regulatory system put in place during the Depression. (And look where that got us -- right into another depression.)

Similarly, the reason the Net Neutrality issue is coming up now is because the Bush-era FCC relaxed regulations separating carriers from content providers.

[cncb]

I live in a pretty populated area and only have one choice for a high-speed provider. What makes people think that this is going to change soon when there are a lot of people that don't even have any high-speed service?

Let's say that a get a second provider in my area. If the first provider is throttling traffic odds are that the second will too since the first can get away with it. Or the "industry" might agree that there is nothing wrong with it and all will do it. How will I vote with my wallet then? Just stop using the internet?

[Skirge01]

Skip to the end if you want to focus on the actual topic of NN.

----------------------------------------

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Do you really think if AT&T had won the case there would be no competion in the communication industry today and we'd all still be using rotary dial phones? Do you think if IBM had lost the case the computer industry would look much different today?

I think you missed my point, Tom. I wasn't saying that the anti-trust investigations and resulting rulings were correct. What I was getting at was that these companies were (mostly) left to contend with the market however they chose. As a result of that "freedom", they did not choose the path which was in the best interests of the consumer.

Consumers vote with their wallet and sooner or later any company that is doing things that are illegal, unfair and monopolistic will change or go out of business.

Tell that to Microsoft and Walmart. Their illegal activities over the years sure don't seem to have hurt them. If anything, it proved that it was simply "good business". They made enough money to keep the lawyers and politicians employed. As you alluded to, I'm doing my part by voting with my wallet when it comes to Walmart. My family is not allowed to shop there. I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything, except making me feel good about myself. Sadly, that's all I can do.

I don't want to govenment protecting me, I want them to get a lot smaller. I can deal with companies that get big, greedy and do stupid things because they eventually change or go away. I can't deal with continued government expansion because they never go away.

Forgive me if I'm wrong here, but you seem to be of the mindset that government will never, ever do the right thing, will never pass a good law, and can't possibly move beyond their past transgressions. There ARE good people out there, who truly want to do the right thing. The problem is power and corruption. As they say, "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Barring an uprising like Egypt, we're stuck with the political system we have, so we can only continue to tell our politicians what we want and what they're doing wrong. If they don't listen, WE need to kick them out of office. The issue is that most people seem to have given up and believe nothing will ever change. And, if that happens, the politicians win.

So much for this not getting political...
---------------------------------------

Resume regular discussion:

What were we talking about again? Oh yeah, net neutrality. I used to have two choices (not counting dial-up): cable and DSL. I had about 12 different DSL companies to choose from, ranging in speeds from 128k to 5MB and varying dramatically in price. I had DSL for quite a while because of that. Then, due to the laws being changed for how phone companies needed to lease their lines--among other things--the DSL competition dried up, since they couldn't be competitive. I now have my choice of 128k down/128k up DSL through Verizon or 10MB cable. Guess which one I went with?

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Forgive me if I'm wrong here, but you seem to be of the mindset that government will never, ever do the right thing, will never pass a good law, and can't possibly move beyond their past transgressions. There ARE good people out there, who truly want to do the right thing. The problem is power and corruption. As they say, "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Barring an uprising like Egypt, we're stuck with the political system we have, so we can only continue to tell our politicians what we want and what they're doing wrong. If they don't listen, WE need to kick them out of office. The issue is that most people seem to have given up and believe nothing will ever change. And, if that happens, the politicians win.

Something else worth remembering. The primary purpose of any business is to make money for its owners. The primary purpose of any government is to protect its citizens. They also act on their behalf in dealings with other governments and in taking on projects (such as building out infrastructure) that individual citizens or companies could not or would not do on their own.

The way governments protect their citizens is this through organizing armies or police forces and through regulation.

Of course there will always be some incompetent or corrupt politicians who will forget what their job is, and because of its decision by committee nature, government policies tend to be over-burdened by bureaucracy, but at least in theory the government's job is to do things that benefit us.

That is absolutely not the job of big business. Most big businesses don't even take steps to act in the best interests of their own employees, much less their customers. The only time big business is going to do something beneficial to us if they believe that they can make more money than by doing some alternative.

[tmiranda]

Greg, Skirge - Opinions noted and respected. Debate is a good thing. I try to keep an open mind about these types of issues and can see your side. My left leaning friends tell me I'm a right wing idiot and my right leaning friends tell me I'm a socialist so I must be doing something right

BTW - I work as a Financial Advisor (and I'm much better at it than programming!) so I know all about regulations. Let me be the first to tell you that you are mistaken if you think regulations protect you in a serious way. An Advisor could follow every rule and regulation and still cheat you blind. An Advisor could break most rules and do the absolute best thing for you. Passing more rules and regulations is not effective in my industry, picking an honest Advisor is. I assume this situation is true in most industries.

As another example, contrary to popular folklore we did not get into the housing/subprime mess because many people broke the rules. Most (read almost all) people followed the rules quite closely and you never hear about them. The few people who broke the rules got all of the press and are blamed for causing the problems. If the few people who did break the rules had not, the housing mess would have unfolded in the exact same way.

Off my soap box.

[samgreco]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

BTW - I work as a Financial Advisor (and I'm much better at it than programming!) so I know all about regulations. Let me be the first to tell you that you are mistaken if you think regulations protect you in a serious way. An Advisor could follow every rule and regulation and still cheat you blind. An Advisor could break most rules and do the absolute best thing for you. Passing more rules and regulations is not effective in my industry, picking an honest Advisor is. I assume this situation is true in most industries.

This is actually a great example of why we need better regulation. It's not quantity, it's quality. It goes to what I said earlier, the regulations are being written by people that don't give a damn about us. What we need is GOOD regulation.

The housing/subprime problem would not have happened if Glass/Steigel (SP?) hadn't been repealed. So it's not the absence of regs, it's the absence of GOOD regs.

I remember the days Skirge brought up, when you had 10 or 12 DSL companies selling their services and AT&T had to sell them the bandwidth. But AT&T was able to get the regulations relaxed with their deep pockets so that they could make it so difficult for the Earthlinks and such, that they gave up. So theoretically someone can still provide DSL using AT&T's wires, no one will try. They can't compete.

So in most towns, you have one set of phone wires and one set of Cable wires. It costs way too much to run a completely new set in parallel. So how does anyone compete.

We need regulation. We just need to get our voices heard. Anyone got a multi-billion dollar lobbying arm they can spare?

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

As another example, contrary to popular folklore we did not get into the housing/subprime mess because many people broke the rules. Most (read almost all) people followed the rules quite closely and you never hear about them. The few people who broke the rules got all of the press and are blamed for causing the problems. If the few people who did break the rules had not, the housing mess would have unfolded in the exact same way.

We got into that mess not because people broke the rules, but because there weren't any rules left to break. Deregulation is what caused the crisis by allowing banks to take unreasonable risks with our money while remaining within the bounds of what was left of the law. That could not have happened had the Depression-era banking regulations remained in place.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by stanger89

The Internet isn't a right, it's not the government's responsibility to ensure that everyone has internet, or to legislate what it should cost.

I wish there was actual competition for high speed internet service in my town so that I could agree with you. However, in most areas of the country, there is a choice of a fat, bureaucratic, greedy and lazy cable company, and a bureaucratic, lazy, greedy, and fat phone company. Both of which have artificial, government sanctioned monopolies. And if a company has been provided a government sanctioned monopoly, then I feel that they should be regulated.

In fact, in my state, the cable company has been recently sponsoring anti-competitive legislation to prevent municipalities from competing with them by offering fiber to the home at 2x to 4x the speeds they offer and about 1/2 the cost.

Drew

[drewg]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Big Business = Bad.
Big Government = Worse.

I'd rank it just the opposite. At least with big government, you have the option of appealing to an elected government official. It is amazing how a US senator can cut through red tape on behalf of a constituent..

Drew

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

We got into that mess not because people broke the rules, but because there weren't any rules left to break. Deregulation is what caused the crisis by allowing banks to take unreasonable risks with our money while remaining within the bounds of what was left of the law. That could not have happened had the Depression-era banking regulations remained in place.

Greg, I think you're one of the few people who is aware of and understands this. In fact, it was even worse because the government (with Bill Clinton spearheading it) actually encouraged (through his policies) banks to make loans to people who never should have gotten one in the first place.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by samgreco

Finally, WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT. It's our own damn fault for not pushing our faces into theirs to tell them what we want and what we'll do if we don't get it. Giant Mega-Corporations have the ears of congress, we have nothing. Because we are quiet.

It may be our fault (I agree with that, far too many of us have not been paying attention for far too long), but I disagree that "we are the government", we are not the government, not anymore. I think the last two elections were an attempt to take it back.

And remember, DMCA and the like only exist because big money corps put the screws to their congress folk to make it happen. All of these bad regulations out there are because they are NOT being done for us.

This is exactly my point though, we can not expect any laws/regulations coming out of Washington to be "pro consumer" (for lack of a better term) given the current environment.

Until things are brought under control, the only laws/regulations I support are ones that seek to bring government under control. Whether Comcast throttles Netflix or not is of absolutely no importance relative to the rest of the issues we're facing.

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Both lawsuits were a total waste of money and cost the companies being sued millions of dollars (that was passed on to the consumer.)

Exactly, the government took Microsoft to Court and won, and it accomplished nothing.

Apple and Google hire some very smart people, and are remarkably successful at taking MS down a notch.

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

But if there are no other choices or no other realistic choices then you are forced to use their service or do without.

I personally have options of 7Mbps DSL, Mediacon Cable, or maybe some expensive wireless options. I'm not very happy with my options, but government regulation isn't the answer.

Originally Posted by GKusnick

This is precisely the issue. When the same corporation that owns the wires into your house is also a major provider of content, that's not a free market. A free market requires that all providers have equal access to those wires, and paradoxical as it may seem, it takes government regulation to ensure that freedom.

Within the next few years, most people will have the option of wireless broadband that rivals or exceeds the performance of their wired options.

The IBM case isn't really comparable because competitors didn't need IBM's permission to sell into their market, whereas AT&T's competitors did need access to the wires.)

But we're rapidly approaching the day when nobody needs wires for broadband.

Originally Posted by GKusnick

It's simply not true that government regulation never goes away. Free-market ideologues have spent the last couple of decades systematically dismantling the banking regulatory system put in place during the Depression. (And look where that got us -- right into another depression.)

If you're talking about the housing bubble, the real cause of that was the government interfering in the market, trying to get more people into homeownership and pushing lenders to lend to unqualified borrowers.

Similarly, the reason the Net Neutrality issue is coming up now is because the Bush-era FCC relaxed regulations separating carriers from content providers.

And yet the new "consumer friendly" FCC that we should trust to regulate the internet has approved the Comcast purchase of NBCU.

We've had how many decades of FCC oversight and regulation of Cable and Satellite providers and how pathetic are our choices for that? Yet the internet is an explosion of options.

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Forgive me if I'm wrong here, but you seem to be of the mindset that government will never, ever do the right thing, will never pass a good law, and can't possibly move beyond their past transgressions.

The current government cannot be expected to do the right thing, yes. Can it move past it past transgressions, yes, but it must regain our trust, and the way to do that is to stop grabbing for power at every opportunity. Once it proves it understands that more power and more regulation isn't the answer to every problem, then maybe my mindset will be able to change.

There ARE good people out there, who truly want to do the right thing.

Unfortunately they appear to be greatly outnumbered, and unfortunately largely shunned.

The problem is power and corruption. As they say, "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Barring an uprising like Egypt, we're stuck with the political system we have, so we can only continue to tell our politicians what we want and what they're doing wrong. If they don't listen, WE need to kick them out of office. The issue is that most people seem to have given up and believe nothing will ever change. And, if that happens, the politicians win.

I don't necessarilly agree with that, not the part that most people have given up. I think most people haven't paid attention for the past several decades. Things have been too good for too long and people just didn't bother paying attention. But the way I see things, that's changed/changing.

Originally Posted by drewg

I wish there was actual competition for high speed internet service in my town so that I could agree with you. However, in most areas of the country, there is a choice of a fat, bureaucratic, greedy and lazy cable company, and a bureaucratic, lazy, greedy, and fat phone company. Both of which have artificial, government sanctioned monopolies. And if a company has been provided a government sanctioned monopoly, then I feel that they should be regulated.

In fact, in my state, the cable company has been recently sponsoring anti-competitive legislation to prevent municipalities from competing with them by offering fiber to the home at 2x to 4x the speeds they offer and about 1/2 the cost.

Drew

But that doesn't make internet a right. And beyond that, what makes you think the result of FCC regulation would be better than FCC regulation of cable/sat. The FCC has been regulating that for decades yet we still have essentially the same situation there that you're complaining about with internet. What makes you think the result will be any better if the FCC gets involved with internet.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I personally have options of 7Mbps DSL, Mediacon Cable, or maybe some expensive wireless options. I'm not very happy with my options, but government regulation isn't the answer.

I never said it was. I was just explaining the downside of having few choices. Regulated regional monopolies like electricity and gas may be ok but providing internet service is something else.

I don't know the answers but the current system isn't acceptable.

[stanger89]

AFAIK, NN, even as advertised, isn't intended to do anything about that.

[panteragstk]

Something I think is relevant is the fact that the way some companies look at things will never change unless GOOD regulation is put in place (as stated by others) and they are forced to follow or they are shut down until they do.

Example: a certain chemical plant was fined for pollution violations by the EPA. They were fined repeatedly. They keep paying the fines because cleaning up their act would cost more than continually paying fines. Nothing happens, just more fines. How is that OK?

On the flip side: If a bar in Texas gets caught serving to minors it is shut down, and in some cases for good, or at least until "new ownership" happens and they are watched like a hawk for a good while until the TABC trusts them again. Sounds good to me.

So, when things are strictly enforced regulations can work well as long as there aren't giant loopholes for companies to jump through (cough, cablecard, cough).

As far as governments being for the people. That is very true. The only thing I have a problem with in that is the fact that corporations are considered a "person" by the government, so technically they have the corporations best interests in mind as much as ours, except they have much deeper pockets.

[Spot]

As my wife reminds me..."cable (or Phone) only matters because it is our internet connection."

Without separation of the content and access providers I fully believe that the government will have to intervene to ensure equal access. AOL tried to steer folks to their content years ago, and it failed miserably because they had poor content and were not able to shape traffic.

Given that a lot of internet traffic travels along academic, government, and non-ISP trunks...who really should control it?

[korben_dallas]

The forum government moderators are coming to regulate this thread.

It is for the good of all, and the per-post tax will be negligible.