1. Even if it prevents some of the worst abuses by incumbents, net neutrality regulation isn't going to create more competition.
In fact, if net neutrality regulation creates additional compliance costs it might actually reduce competition by increasing the barriers to entry for new ISPs.
2. I think most people would agree that the Internet should generally remain a level playing field for all businesses.
However, it's not clear that net neutrality regulation is necessary to maintain such a level playing field. It wasn't necessary in the past. Moreover, there is potential for consumer benefit associated with some kinds of content discrimination, which net neutrality regulation might unjustly prohibit.
The reality is that if the US broadband industry was competitive we wouldn't be having this argument. We should fix that first, then see if we still need net neutrality regulation.
Except in this case the regulation is saying that the ISP must just carry bits. It's not forcing the ISP to do something to be compliant, it's forcing the ISP to not do something. So the costs of compliance are low, if not zero.
There are short-term consumer benefits, in my country we have zero-rated services, where browsing certain sites costs no data. However this completely undermines the concept of the free market. Any competitor to the zero-rated service has a massive hurdle to overcome, either competing with free, or paying the ISP to have the same deal applied to their service.
And there are also cases of abuse. Mobile operators began charging roughly $2 per MB of data for any VOIP traffic, forcing consumers to use standard calls.
By refusing to subject ISPs to regulations, we subject the Internet to the whims of the ISPs.
> So the costs of compliance are low, if not zero.
How could this possibly be zero? If a town's ISP has a bandwidth of 100Gb/s and has a demand of 200Gb/s by their customers, they can:
- prioritize certain bits such as live streaming that can't be slown down without degrading user experience, unlike text (current solution)
- slow down everything as forced by FCC's Net Neutrality (which would make live streaming unwatchable)
- invest in bigger infrastructure and pass the cost down to consumers (which is not zero cost as you claim)
So there you go. Another fun fact, for anyone that has lived through the 80's and 90's, the FCC censored TV and radio to hell with list of words, topics and images that could not be used on public broadcasting as it was considered to be public utility. If the FCC considers the internet public utility in order to impose Net Neutrality, they will be granted the same power as they were on tv. If you think twitter censorship sucks, wait for what's coming when Trump or another administration decides to impose similar rules through the FCC with the excuse that it's now a public utility and that using bad words (against politicians or else) at a certain hour is bad for kids. Don't forget that the boss of the FCC is nominated by Trump. People love asking the government for more regulations even though they always end up paying a high price for it. Just be careful what you ask for is all I'm saying.
> How could this possibly be zero? If a town's ISP has a bandwidth of 100Gb/s and has a demand of 200Gb/s by their customers, they can:
IMO, if you're selling more than you can provide, you're already doing it wrong...
It's not acceptable to prioritize some content over another when having the appropriate infrastructure would solve the problem.
> invest in bigger infrastructure and pass the cost down to consumers (which is not zero cost as you claim)
People will be paying for the product anyway, I don't see anything wrong with charging the cost of production/maintenance + profits (altough I suspect their profits might way higher than they should, and not being used to improve the ISP's as they should. I do not live in US though), that's what most other sellers around the world do and I really believe it's the most appropriate model.
> People will be paying for the product anyway, I don't see anything wrong with charging the cost of production/maintenance + profits
Have you ever thought that many people are fine with the deal they're currently getting and don't have the money to pay for more? Maybe that's great for rich people, but for lower income folks, the way ISPs optimize bandwidth right now is fine, they've probably done tons of testing to make it the less noticeable possible while providing the best prices for their customers (market at work). Forcing high bandwidth for all people even those that don't care will leave people out of internet connection at all as they won't be able to pay at all. So people won't be able to pay anymore but at least your principles will be respected, sounds like the classical case of unintended consequences of leftists policies that always end up hurting the poorest while giving good conscience and a good deal to the rich. Not a big fan of that kind of things personally.
Well, if your town has only one ISP it's probably a small town where everything is much cheaper and there is less money to be made. Why would they invest in infrastructure there if they would never recoup the costs? You already get many advantages by living where you live (lower cost of life, probably less air pollution etc). I used to live in a small town in Peru, everything was much cheaper but it was impossible to watch a video on youtube at more than 144p resolution. That's a bargain I was willing to take and never complained about it, life was cheap. If you want better services that costs billions in investment, move to a place where it makes business sense for someone to invest in such infrastructure and don't expect anyone investing free money for you out of their good heart. You wouldn't do it either, why should they? Here's the thing, you will _never_ get better or equal infrastructure and services in a small town than in a big city. Whether it's the diversity of asian food, schools, museums or internet speed. You'll never get it by living in a small town. Want all those fancy things? Move to these big cities and don't ask people to subsidize your small town more than they already do, big cities folks already pay enormous bills each months, they don't need more of it.
A small town can still service two or more ISPs, the lack of competition is what's ruining it and the lack of NN won't make it a bit better.
You should maybe also remind yourself that some people are not in the position to move around the country. You should not equate your own capabilities in life with those of others.
> You should maybe also remind yourself that some people are not in the position to move around the country.
After living years in Syria and then in Peru, I can say that small towns folks most likely to leave to big cities are not the ones that are well off but the poorest one on the contrary in order to find a job to sustain them. So yeah, I would say it's mostly rich people that can afford to stay in small towns, the rest move to bigger places where there is more chance in finding people willing to invest in them even for low skill workers.
Some people cannot move. Period. It may be their monetary situation, or something else.
Suggesting that the situation in Syria and Peru is the same as in the US is also rather disingenuous. It is with high probability not.
And even if it was so, does that mean the ISP gets the automatic right to fuck over everyone left because they didn't move? Does that right extend to other things? Should water utility not be provided to them because they didn't move?
> does that mean the ISP gets the automatic right to fuck over everyone left because they didn't move?
The fact that they refuse to invest money they will never get back doesn't mean they want to "fuck you over". Have you ever thrown money out of the window just for fun? Well now you understand these ISPs' point of view.
> Should water utility not be provided to them because they didn't move?
If there's only one person left in town, should a billion dollar installation still be maintained for that one person? What if it's 5 people or a couple of hundreds? Isn't it selfish too to demand a whole billion service industry (internet, water etc) to invest and work just for you and run their business as a loss just because you refuse to move? Western countries are running with trillions of dollars in debts because of these kinds of "investments", not sure if this is sustainable (surely hope so but doubt it). I would personally love to live in the middle of nowhere in beautiful Peru with high speed internet, clean water and top infrastructure, I would never demand anyone to pay for it for me however.
You don't need to maintain billion dollar installations for 5 people. For 5 people the annual cost of running a simple fiber installation can be well below a couple thousand dollars. I think you just have no idea what realistic costs an ISP actual has.
The ISP equipment usually in deployment is incredibly low maintenance and cost. And then "piping the internet" to the customer is exactly 0 cost.
We're talking clean water, electricity, internet and just about any other public utility, for 5 people. Like if I want to have fibre and all the other utilities here https://www.google.com/maps/@-16.2099526,-73.027656,8.94z, you think it would be cheap? If so I highly recommend starting your own business providing high quality infrastructure service as a service anywhere anytime :)
For the record, Net Neautraility does not and is not a legal framework for telling ISPs about how to manage their bandwidth. In its most simplistic terms:
Net neutrality is simply tha concept of treating access to the network (in this example the ISP and the greater internet it connects to) where it does not prioritize one set of bits and simultaneously and purposefully (and typically for the exchange of money) slow down access to something else.
Bandwidth management, or the idea of prioritizing on the fly to ensure quality service, does not inheritantly violate those principals. What does is if the video people paid th ISP money for faster bits and to slow down competitors and/or the ISP slowing down competitors to promote its own services.
Notice it also has no legal framework for specific types of access or information, simply that the pipe should be neutral and non-interfered. In fact, net neutrality laws can help improve privacy and gives more standing for companies to fight back against gov surveillance
Managing bandwidth based on a paid fee is a type of a bandwidth management. In analogous fields, we accept paid prioritization. Pricing/auctioning is a commonly used method for assigning resources efficiently.
If my ISP is hitting peak throughput at 8pm on monday night, it makes sense for high priority traffic to pay for priority (streaming, telephony, etc), while low priority traffic (bittorrnet, dropbox updates, etc) slow down because they are unwilling to pay.
I don't think outright blocking is justified or even purposeful slowing down (rather than speeding other stuff up). But i don't think treating everything the same is economically justified.
Net neutrality in its purist form definitely means every packet is treated equal. The whole discussion started because ISPs wanted to charge more for streaming content because it's an increased load on their network.
Your argument is usually what I tell people when they ask about NN. It's a lot more complicated than treating every packet equal because at capacity networks want to manage bandwidth.
You could also think of it this way, why should the general user be required to subsidize a heavy BitTorrent user's traffic? Now maybe ISPs shouldn't oversell in the first place, but the operating state of a network is congestion.
Your argument is very moderate and is not NN, but it's close. I would tend to agree and prefer what you describe: content neutral bandwidth management. But that's pretty much an oxymoron.
I think what the parent comment was referring to in regards to government censorship is the fact that the legislation in question (the one the current government is trying to repeal) is the classification of ISPs as "common carriers" under Title II of the communications act of 1934.
This has the effect of enforcing net neutrality, which is why everyone is in favour of it. However it also gives the FCC the power to censor content, like they did with television and radio in the past.
>Upgrading your infrastructure to meet the demand your customers place on it isn't a cost of regulatory compliance. It's the cost of doing business.
No, that's not how business work. If customers are not happy with a service they can shop elsewhere. The business is not forced by government to improve its infrastructure, just by customers pressure. The fact that some places only have one ISP is because government over-regulate right to pass and install fiber.
> Where in the network neutrality order did the FCC impose censorship on the Internet?
Once you turn the internet into a public utility, it gives the power to the FCC to censor it anyway it wants, just like TV or radio. Of course it won't be done overnight. Just wait for a big nazi/antifa/pedophile/terrorist internet scandal that would lead to a tragic death, than people will rush in a bill that says "sorry folks but we can't allow people to publish anything they want, think of the children" just like they did with public broadcasting on tv and radio. Making the internet a public utility is a requirement to pass these censorship laws, it's a first step. Censorship always happens in small steps. Think of the patriot act, if you give the government the power to take your rights away, they eventually will. Although to be fair they already have that power, but this will basically give them even more justification and power.
I'd rather have the status quo than giving full censorship power to a government agency. Not to mention that fiber is getting to more places each day with most of the densest cities covered now. Looks like the problems Net Neutrality was supposed to protect us from are not as grave as they used to be and that the market kind of sorted itself out. Why give the FCC/Trump full censorship power now and force ISPs to jack up their prices just because progress is not happening as fast as some elitists say it should? You think adding more regulations will make fiber be deployed faster?
> No one is talking about adding complex new regulation here but you.
If you follow a bit about what happened the past 100 years of new government agencies rules is that they have _always_ yes, _always_ grown into thousands and thousands of regulations each year. But yeah, I'm sure this time it won't happen...
I don't know any more clear way to state that this regulation isn't new. But I don't think it matters, because I get the vibe that you're super into one of those ideologies that provides a handy, concise, internally consistent answer to any question with which you might find yourself confronted, and it's just a shame that reality so often disagrees. Enjoy your ancap or Randianism or whatever you happen to call it. I'll be over here wishing reality was less complicated than I've consistently observed it to be.
"On 26 February 2015, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled in favor of net neutrality by reclassifying broadband access as a telecommunications service and thus applying Title II (common carrier) of the Communications Act of 1934 as well as section 706 of the Telecommunications act of 1996[92] to Internet service providers.[93][94][95][96][97][98] On 12 March 2015, the FCC released the specific details of its new net neutrality rule.[99][100][101] And on 13 April 2015, the FCC published the final rule on its new regulations.[102][103] The rule took effect on June 12, 2015."
A core design principle of the Internet since the beginning has been the "end-to-end principle", which was that the job of the network was to distribute the bits between end points. FCC rules concerning network data go back to the 1960s.
The FCC began rule-making on network neutrality in the mid-2000s, in direct response to various ISPs blocking traffic.
> However, it's not clear that net neutrality regulation is necessary to maintain such a level playing field.
Yes it is.
> It wasn't necessary in the past.
There have been abuses already. I don't expect ISPs will dive into full-blown abuse immediately, but they will ease their way into it.
> Moreover, there is potential for consumer benefit associated with some kinds of content discrimination
Could you give an example, because I certainly can't think of any.
> The reality is that if the US broadband industry was competitive we wouldn't be having this argument. We should fix that first, then see if we still need net neutrality regulation.
Absolutely! That is exactly the problem I was trying to express. To abolish net neutrality while the market is in this state is clearly a bad idea.
Abolishing net neutrality will not do anything to promote a competition, so it's important that we start finding things that will.
> 1. Even if it prevents some of the worst abuses by incumbents, net neutrality regulation isn't going to create more competition.
Agreed, but net neutrality regulation never claimed it would. The concept of net neutrality accepts the fact that we do not (and cannot) have a free, competitive market for internet access, and tries to ensure that incumbents do not engage in anti-consumer practices that they wouldn't be able to do _if_ it were possible to have sufficient competition.
> 2. I think most people would agree that the Internet should generally remain a level playing field for all businesses.
> However, it's not clear that net neutrality regulation is necessary to maintain such a level playing field.
It's not, but no one seems to have any better ideas. Simply ditching net neutrality is nearly guaranteed to erode that level playing field. I'd be happy to entertain other ideas to maintain it, but no one seems to be presenting those, and the FCC is removing something useful without proposing an effective replacement (or any replacement at all, for that matter).
> It wasn't necessary in the past.
Wasn't it? Isn't the current net neutrality regulation a direct response to anti-consumer behavior by ISPs?
> Moreover, there is potential for consumer benefit associated with some kinds of content discrimination, which net neutrality regulation might unjustly prohibit.
The only benefit I can think of is short-term "lock-in" type behavior: stuff like Spotify streaming not counting toward your data cap. All that does is make Spotify more enticing and get users locked in, all due to an entirely synthetic advantage.
While this provides a short-term benefit to the customer, it provides long-term negatives as Spotify's competitors are forced out of the market, and new upstart competitors don't stand a chance.
Uncapped streaming is a fairly minor thing they could do (some streaming services already do this, and I'm pissed they're able to get away with it) and likely wouldn't hurt competitors enough to kill them, but unwinding net neutrality regulations would allow them to engage in crippling anti-competitive behavior, like making deals with ISPs to charge _their_ customers more for access to other streaming services.
> The reality is that if the US broadband industry was competitive we wouldn't be having this argument. We should fix that first, then see if we still need net neutrality regulation.
We can't. It is absolutely not in the public's interest to allow just anyone to dig up roadsides and bury cable, and radio spectrum is too scarce a resource to allow robust competition. Do you have any ideas as to how to get around that?
> While this provides a short-term benefit to the customer, it provides long-term negatives as Spotify's competitors are forced out of the market, and new upstart competitors don't stand a chance.
Realistically how much more of an issue will this be than it is now? In the UK, mobile providers already offer 6-month Spotify/Netflix/whatever subscriptions as a sweetner with your contract, which seems like the same issue to me but in a non-technological sense. New upstarts don't have the money nor the brand recognition to make that happen.
Netflix has become a part of the Collective consciousness, arguably on a similar level to googling something. Even with all the net neutrality laws in the world behind them I pitty the upstart who think they can go up against the current big players in the market (which includes content studios) and win. Spotify can't be said to have the same sort of recognition but Apple Music probably can, owing to it being featured on every iPhone and iTunes installation. New upstarts can't afford to release a smartphone to push their services, either.
It's capitalism. ISPs love short-term customer benefits, because the customers love them too. Once their customer base are fed up with their free Spotify sub, the ISP will have had 12 months to come up with the next thing. And so it will continue in theory until we all have huge data caps as standard anyway so none of this will matter. And then somebody will come up with a way to double the size of Netflix streaming video for a few more pixels and then we start again.
> We can't. It is absolutely not in the public's interest to allow just anyone to dig up roadsides and bury cable
Yes you can. Have the municipality be the one responsible for running fiber from reaidences to common access points. The the ISPs all have equal access and you can change ISPs very easy.
But again, politics and encumbent ISPs will prevent this.
I've posted this comment before in another thread:
I oppose net neutrality regulation. In principle, I don't think there's anything wrong with an ISP prioritizing certain kinds of traffic over others, so long as it does not have an anti-competitive effect.
For example, I don't see how Netflix paying Comcast to zero-rate Netflix traffic is fundamentally different from Amazon contracting with mail carriers to subsidize the cost of shipping for Amazon purchases, or even -- to use an example another commenter made -- an appliance manufacturer contracting with electrical utilities to subsidize the cost of electricity used by their appliances. So long as Comcast makes its zero-rating program available to all content providers -- including their own -- on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, I don't think there are any competition issues.
I've heard people argue that zero-rating makes it harder for smaller content providers to compete, since they won't have the resources to subsidize their customers' traffic. As I said in another comment, that's just the nature of business. Being big affords you certain advantages, like economies of scale. This makes it easier to compete on price. Smaller companies have to compete in other ways.
In my view, the real problem with the telecom industry in the United States is a lack of competition [0], a problem caused at least in part by municipal [1] and state [2] governments. With more competition, net neutrality would be a non-issue. Consumers would just stop using ISPs that unfairly discriminate between traffic.
The reason why I and some other HN commenters (and L3 Communications) find this argument bizarre is because of the concept of transit traffic charges being applied to the last mile, which previously was not an industry practice.
Comcast's customers are requesting the data; if Comcast were a second tier backbone, or an AS between two others, then it would make sense to charge for traffic, as it doesn't benefit. But the traffic going to Comcast is there to benefit its subscribers, without which, Comcast doesn't make enough money. The most bizarre thing is that if the customers were to upload the same amount of data back to the sites, then they wouldn't be charged, as the data was symmetrical!
Why would an ISP be able to charge other AS's for sending traffic to its own customers? If there were even a single competitor in that region, this dynamic would change completely.
I think it makes sense because retail ISPs operate in a two-sided market. Comcast provides access to Internet services, which customers want and are willing to pay for. Similarly, Comcast provides access to customers, which the Internet companies who provide those services (and associated CDNs and transit providers) want and are willing to pay for.
I don't think there's anything especially wrong with this business model. It's similar to how a newspaper charges both readers and advertisers for access. The disadvantage is that you have to keep both parties happy.
Incidentally, if customers uploaded the same amount of data as the Internet services, Comcast wouldn't get transit fees but it would get additional revenue from the customers, so I think things would balance out.
> I think it makes sense because retail ISPs operate in a two-sided market. Comcast provides access to Internet services, which customers want and are willing to pay for.
Yes, but this is where your analysis breaks down: it's not a free market. The customers are a captive market.
> Similarly, Comcast provides access to customers, which the Internet companies who provide those services (and associated CDNs and transit providers) want and are willing to pay for.
The Internet companies are only willing to pay because they have no other alternatives. They only pay because Comcast has a monopoly and thus acts as a gatekeeper, and then only because Comcast has such a large market share that refusing Comcast would deprive them of a significant part of the market. Calling this "voluntary" participation in a two sided market is absurd. Blackmail is what it is.
When anybody else than Comcast tries this, they are laughed at and told to piss off.
> I don't think there's anything especially wrong with this business model.
There's plenty wrong. The subscribers have already paid full price and now Comcast wants more, this time from the Internet companies, without which Comcast would have nothing to sell.
> It's similar to how a newspaper charges both readers and advertisers for access.
This is just a bad analogy, again. Newspaper readers aren't paying full price for the newspaper, and they are not paying for getting access to the adverts.
> Incidentally, if customers uploaded the same amount of data as the Internet services, Comcast wouldn't get transit fees but it would get additional revenue from the customers, so I think things would balance out.
This just plain incorrect. Comcast wouldn't get a penny more from it's subscribers. Internet access is inherently asymmetrical. Were subscribers to use their upstream more, it would not result in any more revenues.
> I think it makes sense because retail ISPs operate in a two-sided market. Comcast provides access to Internet services, which customers want and are willing to pay for.
So, I put up a small SaaS that I want people to use. In your world, I now have to go knock on the door of all the ISPs out there to pay them for access to their customers?
I think your mail analogy falls apart because mail carriers are end-to-end, while ISPs are part of a much larger heterogeneous network. If Amazon can get a special deal from FedUps to deliver a package from their warehouse to my door, that's reasonable since it's just a standard business deal exchanging services for money.
The international postal network is a bit more analogous. Let's say you order something from Widget Industrie in France. They pay La Poste to send it to your door in the US. La Poste transfers it to USPS, and pays USPS part of the postage to handle their end of it. Now imagine that USPS leaves your package on the warehouse floor for three weeks because Widget Industrie didn't sign up for their "expedited service" plan. Widget Industrie has never even talked to USPS, maybe doesn't even know that USPS exists.
Of course, international mail is regulated and has had "mail neutrality" since the 19th century, so you don't have to worry about that.
If some company wants to provide specialized data services so that Netflix can send data through their service to customers, that's fine with me. But that's not "the internet." These companies should decide whether they want to provide "internet access" or just specialized paid data access. Back to the mail analogy, FedEx and UPS have much more flexibility in terms of how they operate than USPS does, but as a consequence they don't get to participate in the international mail system.
And indeed, this already happens. Many ISPs provide phone and TV services separate from "internet" services. Nobody is complaining that Netflix can't get into your cable TV package, even though it's all just digital bits on the wire these days. But they don't call it "internet service." When they call a service that, there are certain expectations.
I agree that a lack of competition is the major problem here. If any given ISP customer had a dozen services to choose from, this would all go away. But that's a vastly more difficult problem. Saying we shouldn't worry about net neutrality because the real solution is competition is like saying we shouldn't worry about social security because the real problem is aging. Yes, if we solved aging we wouldn't need social security, but that's not a realistic approach.
> In principle, I don't think there's anything wrong with an ISP prioritizing certain kinds of traffic over others, so long as it does not have an anti-competitive effect.
Can't have that if there is no competitive ISP you can change to, if you don't like this NN violating ISP.
> For example, I don't see how Netflix paying Comcast to zero-rate Netflix traffic is fundamentally different from Amazon contracting with mail carriers to subsidize the cost of shipping for Amazon purchases
This analogy breaks down immediately, because Comcast is already getting Netflix traffic for free. There is no toll that needs to be subsidized, no charge that needs to be zero rated. Comcast is just blackmailing Netflix for protection money.
> or even -- to use an example another commenter made -- an appliance manufacturer contracting with electrical utilities to subsidize the cost of electricity used by their appliances.
Another bad analogy. There is no "cost of electricity" equivalent incurred by Comcast. The Netflix bits are free to Comcast.
> So long as Comcast makes its zero-rating program available to all content providers -- including their own -- on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, I don't think there are any competition issues.
You do realize that this effectively sets up Comcast as the gatekeeper to the Internet? Do you really want Comcast to be able to decide what's on your Interwebz?
That's even before we get into the fact that requiring to contract with Comcast before you can offer any online service is a barrier to entry and a competitive barrier.
The whole idea is absurd. This way lies the Balkanization of the Internet and Internet fiefdoms.
We already tried something similar and it was a shitshow. Remember how insane and difficult it was to offer premium and value add SMS services back in the days, when you had to cut deals with every single cell phone company before you could offer your service?
>
I've heard people argue that zero-rating makes it harder for smaller content providers to compete, since they won't have the resources to subsidize their customers' traffic. As I said in another comment, that's just the nature of business. Being big affords you certain advantages, like economies of scale. This makes it easier to compete on price. Smaller companies have to compete in other ways.
So that's your solution? Screw the small guys?
Lets institutionalize a protection racket, so that only big players can offer service because they can afford to grease the right palms.
> In my view, the real problem with the telecom industry in the United States is a lack of competition [0], a problem caused at least in part by municipal [1] and state [2] governments. With more competition, net neutrality would be a non-issue. Consumers would just stop using ISPs that unfairly discriminate between traffic.
Now you are on the right track. However none of this helps with the immediate problems. Most people have a monopoly provider. You can't change providers if there are no options. Even if we start now, there won't be another option for years.
Meanwhile monopoly providers will use their monopoly to extract monopoly rents, both from customers and online services, best they can. We should not give them permission to gouge more by repealing NN.
As to your list of problems, you forgot to add the FCC killing line sharing due to the Brand X case. If we had that, then we could theoretically have had competition even over a monopoly last mile infrastructure.
> Can't have that if there is no competitive ISP you can change to, if you don't like this NN violating ISP.
Sure, but that indicates a need for competition, not net neutrality. As I said in another comment, even if it prevents some of the worst abuses by incumbents, net neutrality regulation isn't going to create more competition.
> This analogy breaks down immediately, because Comcast is already getting Netflix traffic for free. There is no toll that needs to be subsidized, no charge that needs to be zero rated. Comcast is just blackmailing Netflix for protection money.
I don't think you understand the example. Mail carriers also get packages from Amazon for "free" in that sense. They don't pay Amazon for the right to deliver Amazon's mail.
It occurs to me that there is a difference in that the recipients of packages do not need to pay to receive them, whereas Internet users pay for access. There's no reason why mail services couldn't work that way in theory, though.
> You do realize that this effectively sets up Comcast as the gatekeeper to the Internet? Do you really want Comcast to be able to decide what's on your Interwebz?
If the market was sufficiently competitive, then Comcast wouldn't be the gatekeeper. If Comcast behaved badly, people would switch to a different provider.
Not every instance of possible bad behaviour needs to be regulated.
> That's even before we get into the fact that requiring to contract with Comcast before you can offer any online service is a barrier to entry and a competitive barrier.
We're talking about zero-rating, not "requiring to contract with Comcast before you can offer any online service". Those are completely different things.
> So that's your solution? Screw the small guys?
My solution is to increase competition, actually. My point is that we don't penalize big companies for being successful by taking away the benefits of being big, such as economies of scale. The "small guys" have to compete as well and shouldn't rely on the state to reduce consumer benefit in order to make it easier for them to increase their market share.
> Even if we start now, there won't be another option for years.
That's not necessarily true. For example, the FCC could do what Canada does and require ISPs to sell Internet access at fixed wholesale rates to resellers. Competition will spring up overnight.
There are many other approaches as well, such as blocking municipalities from entering into monopoly franchise agreements with ISPs, ensuring equal access to rights of way, and supporting municipal broadband.
> Sure, but that indicates a need for competition, not net neutrality.
> If the market was sufficiently competitive, then Comcast wouldn't be the gatekeeper.
> My solution is to increase competition, actually.
> Competition will spring up overnight.
You keep saying this, but I don't think you understand:
1) That businesses like this do not spring up overnight, even in the figurative sense.
2) The incumbent ISPs lobby to reduce competition (often getting laws on the books to make it illegal for municipalities to offer internet access), and are largely very successful at it.
3) Rural areas basically get fucked, because there won't be enough money in new competition.
4) In the meantime, we have nothing to protect customers. Let's say you're right, and we can somehow increase competition. No, it's not going to happen overnight. What's going to protect customers in the meantime, after current net neutrality regulation is rolled back? Nothing. Removing regulation that has been obsoleted by other measures is fine and the right thing to do, but there's nothing to replace it right now that will have the same effect.
> For example, the FCC could do what Canada does and require ISPs to sell Internet access at fixed wholesale rates to resellers.
So why is this kind of "anti-free-market" regulation ok, while net neutrality rules aren't? (Also, we tried this. Most smaller players that took advantage of it failed because, while the Comcasts of the US were required to _provide_ access, there wasn't really a way to require that they provide it easily, or provide good service and reliability with it. And I believe this ended up getting repealed due to... you guessed it, lobbying efforts from the incumbents.)
I'm just really getting tired of all this "increase competition" rhetoric coming from people who seem to think they live in a fantasy world where it's easy, or even possible, to get these sorts of things done, especially in the current political climate.
I agree, we need competition, but that's not something we will get in a reasonable time scale. We're insisting on NetNeutrality for the sole purpose of protecting consumers. By just saying 'the free market will solve all our problems' won't help us get there or solve any real issues that will plague people from now til some future where that may or may not be realized.
Per your second point regarding the imminency of a free market, is that not also a regulation being imposed upon ISP's? You're proposing regulation on the physical infrastructure whilst NN argues for regulation (or non-regulation as it were) of data. What is the difference in your opinion?
> what Canada does and require ISPs to sell Internet access at fixed wholesale rates
Actually, it's access to the last mile that's sold a fixed rates. The ISPs lease aggregated links to the last mile network depending on how much capacity they need. These ISPs have their own internet uplinks. There are ISPs that are just pure resellers but I'm not sure if this is regulated.
But even this had a net neutrality issue. The ISPs leasing out the last mile access started to throttle certain traffic (bittorrent and VPNs) for their customers AND the customers of the ISPs that leased the last mile.
Recently the fight was over access to the new FTTH connections.
>> Can't have that if there is no competitive ISP you can change to, if you don't like this NN violating ISP.
>Sure, but that indicates a need for competition, not net neutrality.
True. I'm fine with not requiring NN in markets where there are at least four more equivalent or better options to chose from, one of which has to be following NN.
> As I said in another comment, even if it prevents some of the worst abuses by incumbents, net neutrality regulation isn't going to create more competition.
Again true, but that does not mean we should allow NN abuse in the absence of competition.
>> This analogy breaks down immediately, because Comcast is already getting Netflix traffic for free. There is no toll that needs to be subsidized, no charge that needs to be zero rated. Comcast is just blackmailing Netflix for protection money.
> I don't think you understand the example. Mail carriers also get packages from Amazon for "free" in that sense. They don't pay Amazon for the right to deliver Amazon's mail.
I understand the example just fine, it's you that's got the wrong end of the stick.
Your first error is equating the mail carriers with Comcast. Comcast is not the mail carrier. The mail carriers are not the recipients of each piece of mail. Comcast, on the other hand, is the recipient of the bits.
A more apt analogy is that Comcast is the building owner with a mail room. The mail carrier drops off letters to the mail room, for free to Comcast. Comcast then distributes the letters to each tenant, who all pay Comcast for this letter delivery service.
Not a single building owner would get their mail delivered by the mail carriers, if they had a guard standing at the mail room door and if that guard demanded payment before letting anybody pass. In fact that would be a really quick way of ending up in court.
Your second error is thinking that the delivery of mail is the same as the delivery of bits. Each piece of mail requires incremental energy and manhours to deliver, whereas Comcast does not incur any marginal cost for taking delivery of and passing along the bits that their customers have requested.
>> You do realize that this effectively sets up Comcast as the gatekeeper to the Internet? Do you really want Comcast to be able to decide what's on your Interwebz?
>If the market was sufficiently competitive, then Comcast wouldn't be the gatekeeper. If Comcast behaved badly, people would switch to a different provider.
Yes, that's how it works in theory. Too bad Comcast doesn't have any competition in most areas. What's your non-theoretical solution?
> Not every instance of possible bad behaviour needs to be regulated.
So, allow bad behavior until somebody comes along with billions of dollars and builds out a (hopefully) better behaved competitor?
>> That's even before we get into the fact that requiring to contract with Comcast before you can offer any online service is a barrier to entry and a competitive barrier.
> We're talking about zero-rating, not "requiring to contract with Comcast before you can offer any online service". Those are completely different things.
Please explain how those are different things. How will I be able to stream HD cat videos to my users with Comcast without contracting with Comcast for zero rating?
>> So that's your solution? Screw the small guys?
> My solution is to increase competition, actually. My point is that we don't penalize big companies for being successful by taking away the benefits of being big, such as economies of scale.
How is being able to afford to pay protection money an economy of scale?
> The "small guys" have to compete as well and shouldn't rely on the state to reduce consumer benefit in order to make it easier for them to increase their market share.
Wait, what?! How is consumer benefit reduced by abolishing NN? How is consumer benefit reduced by increased availability of online services?
>> Even if we start now, there won't be another option for years.
> That's not necessarily true. For example, the FCC could do what Canada does and require ISPs to sell Internet access at fixed wholesale rates to resellers. Competition will spring up overnight.
You know, that's what we had with the Telecom Act of '96. The FCC decided we shouldn't have that after they lost the Brand X case.
Any other suggestions? Preferably some which can be practically implemented in a reasonably short time frame, such as years instead of decades.
> There are many other approaches as well, such as blocking municipalities from entering into monopoly franchise agreements with ISPs, ensuring equal access to rights of way, and supporting municipal broadband.
I'm all aboard with these suggestions, but even with all of these any improvement will take years, if not decades, and presupposes billions of capital and totally ignores the winner takes all of natural monopolies.
Everything you talk about is contrary to the current reality, and it boggles the mind the mental gymnastics you are putting yourself through to get there.
I think the obvious answer is yes. With conditions that are agreed apon by voters. Voters are not a factor in this legislation outside the fact that it is being executed on party lines.
That's about 50%, which is the commonly quoted figure. However, IIRC that figure is skewed significantly by second (and further) marriages (i.e. by people who "like" getting divorced). The figures for first marriage are somewhat lower.
The interesting thing is that you can't actually divide one number by the other, because you don't know when the marriages began. What you actually need is the data "how many marriages in 1980/1981 &c end in divorce"? The information that a bunch of retired baby boomers are divorcing has little to no relevance to 30-somethings getting married right now.
In particular, since fewer people are getting married than used to (the whole point of the article), this is overstating the divorce rate.
Requiring a person to unlock a device is not prohibited by the Fifth Amendment simply because the device contains incriminating information that would otherwise be inaccessible to police.
If the police have a valid warrant to search your safe, you are generally required to unlock it for them, even if the safe contains evidence that incriminates you. If you are issued a valid subpoena to produce certain documents in your possession, you are generally required to produce those documents, even if they incriminate you. Compelled decryption of hard drives is fundamentally no different.
It is true that the act of unlocking the safe or producing those documents is itself testimonial in the sense that you are conveying the fact that you know the combination or possess those documents. But under the "foregone conclusion" doctrine, if the state already knows that implicit testimony, then it is not protected by the Fifth Amendment. It's obvious that Rawls knows the password to the drives.
There are legitimate concerns about how search warrants should apply to electronic devices. However, these are Fourth Amendment issues, not Fifth Amendment ones.
If you're interested, Orin Kerr from the Volokh Conspiracy has written several articles about compelled decryption, including with respect to this particular case [1, 2, 3].
What checks exist to prevent police from planting a USB hard drive on an enemy of the state that's encrypted and then claiming the defendant won't decrypt the hard drive? The state would have a really easy time imprisoning him/her because the defendant would never be able to provide a key to decrypt it.
The check there is the judge and jury, which could be convinced by the defense that this is not their hard drive -
unlike the case of Francis Rawls, where they haven't even attempted to contest that he knows the password. They haven't claimed that they are unable to perform the action, they're simply refusing to do it (and unsuccessfully contesting that they don't have to do this), so that's contempt.
It's kind of counterproductive to assume a singular agent "the state" in this context - all legal checks and balances essentially rely on multiple, separate, competing agents of the state controlling each other, separation of powers and all that. If police and all the judges are both on the same corrupt side then there's nothing stopping them from convicting you for murder of Abraham Lincoln and locking you up indefinitely for that, but we're working off of the assumption that this is not the case.
I'd say though that if a judge can get a free pass to lock anyone away indefinitely by police planting a USB drive -- by claiming the defendant is in contempt of court -- that's drastically different in terms of payoff on evidence planting.
Planting a gun on a defendant is much harder to do than planting a USB drive. If it really was the defendant's, they probably have munition for it, there's biological contamination etc.
It seems to me there should be an onus on the prosecutor to prove that they defendant has the key and isn't giving it up before the defendant is held in contempt of court: "Here's a video showing the defendant access the banned booked on the USB drive, she won't give up the USB-decryption key!"
Thanks for sharing Kerr's articles! I wasn't familiar with this issue, so I read them, and in my opinion, I think he's dead wrong (and the 3rd Circuit ruling). The argument that by disclosing his password, Doe is only admitting, "I know the password," which is a forgone conclusion, is nonsense. That statement necessarily carries with it a number of additional statements, including "Very few other people (if any) also have this password" by virtue of what a password is, and "I have read/write access to this hard drive," which when coupled with the previous statement, leads to the conclusion "I wrote the material on this hard drive to this hard drive." Kerr's argument is basically "Doe is only admitting to the premise" while ignoring that an entire chain of reasoning necessarily follows from the premise.
With a safe, as with any encrypted document, there are a finite number of keys. I think that invalidates the idea of possession of the password being important, at least from a "purely lawful" point of view.
Read/write access is basically physical access. Anyone with enough resources could accomplish physical access.
It's possible I'm being paranoid, but it seems like most of law is based on series of assumptions. It isn't a purely logical idea, which is why we have so much fun arguing about it. It is fundamentally the hope of writing down logic in a language that doesn't, unambiguously, contain it.
I think the safe analogy is an excellent way to illustrate the issue. Encrypting a file is essentially the same thing as locking it in a safe in what I believe is the ultimate "eyes of the law" once this gets fully tried.
Encryption is nothing like locking in a safe further in a similar situation I'm pretty sure rather than going to court they just open the safe making the example even more useless.
It's a bit like the safe exactly because there's a lot of actual existing precedent where they do not "just open the safe" but require the defendant to produce the key/code to the safe; and instead of attempting to breach the safe, hold the defendant jailed for contempt if they refuse to do so.
In this particular case the authorities are explicitly arguing that there's no good reason to use a different process for passwords as they currently use for safes, and this (requiring the defendant to unlock it) is the standard procedure, not drilling the safe open.
Sure, to technical folks like us, but notice I said "in the eyes of the law". Furthermore, police can not open a safe without a court order, so guess your reply was a bust all around?
Do you have a citation wherein encryption is treated like a safe or are you like most people kind of winging it?
I know they can't open a safe or for that matter a door without a court order. The point was that the comparison between forcing open a safe and forcing someone to produce a passphrase was meaningless because the apparently treacherous question of compulsion to testify against yourself wouldn't be tested when I drill could do the job.
I am not a lawyer but I know enough to know that most people in most discussions are full of it and know little. What actually is mysterious is why people believe that their nonexistent expertise adds to the discussion.
Imagine if the matter were technical and a bunch of non tech people, say the kind who get confused about ram and storage, referring to both as memory,or call the entire thing the cpu were volunteering different insights into the question at hand. It would be useless in a funny sort of way.
I think it's more likely that there's a history here that we're not aware of. His complaint suggests he's been arguing with Google's management for some time, and that this memo was the last straw.
I oppose net neutrality regulation. In principle, I don't think there's anything wrong with an ISP prioritizing certain kinds of traffic over others, so long as it does not have an anti-competitive effect.
For example, I don't see how Netflix paying Comcast to zero-rate Netflix traffic is fundamentally different from Amazon contracting with mail carriers to subsidize the cost of shipping for Amazon purchases, or even -- to use an example another commenter made -- an appliance manufacturer contracting with electrical utilities to subsidize the cost of electricity used by their appliances. So long as Comcast makes its zero-rating program available to all content providers -- including their own -- on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, I don't think there are any competition issues.
I've heard people argue that zero-rating makes it harder for smaller content providers to compete, since they won't have the resources to subsidize their customers' traffic. As I said in another comment, that's just the nature of business. Being big affords you certain advantages, like economies of scale. This makes it easier to compete on price. Smaller companies have to compete in other ways.
In my view, the real problem with the telecom industry in the United States is a lack of competition [0], a problem caused at least in part by municipal [1] and state [2] governments. With more competition, net neutrality would be a non-issue. Consumers would just stop using ISPs that unfairly discriminate between traffic.
I think the Wired article misses the bigger picture. As you mentioned, the industry of providing network access is one with huge economies of scale. The result (if left unregulated) is always a monopoly or an oligopoly - with certain regions belonging to certain providers. Introducing a new competitor is very, very difficult in such a market, regardless of regulations and lowering prices for right of way. Google learned this the hard way - they have stopped their expansion back in 2016. As a government you can either heavily regulate such markets to make sure the consumers get a fair deal (which is what net neutrality is about) or you can turn it into a public service, ie. allow municipalities to provide internet access (what your third article alludes to).
> For example, I don't see how Netflix paying Comcast to zero-rate Netflix traffic is fundamentally different from Amazon contracting with mail carriers to subsidize the cost of shipping for Amazon purchases
Two things:
1) Net neutrality is about not slowing down transit of all other packages (that don't get paid extra for)
2) Your comparison is flawed. Comcast isn't the mail carrier, Comcast is the (only) road. If Amazon makes a deal with a CDN (if they didn't have their own) or any other middle-man service on the net, that isn't an issue, nor related to net neutrality at all.
(1) They most certainly are slowed down. Mail services have limited bandwidth (e.g. Christmas), and higher priority package can and do displace low priority ones.
1) Which is either where the comparison gets accurate to bandwidth without net neutrality, or breaks as a comparison with net neutrality, because then it's FIFO regardless of which service/delivery network.
2) When you say usually, do you mean globally or in the US where we're discussing net neutrality? Because there most certainly usually is a local monopoly.
> 100% of all developed US census blocks have at least two broadband providers.
That's false going by your own source. Broadband requires 25Mbps/3Mbps [1] (even if I personally think even that's low), and 58% percent of developed census blocks lack choice there, of which 21% can't even get it.
The truth remains that if you want broadband, you're in a majority of cases locked to a local monopoly. This is what net neutrality fixes. Until local monopolies can be dealt with at least.
They should have updated the speeds considered "broadband" but by definition, you'll always have a portion of the population lagging behind any standard that's defined as "what 80% of the population had access to"
> to use an example another commenter made -- an appliance manufacturer contracting with electrical utilities to subsidize the cost of electricity used by their appliances
Is that something you are claiming currently occurs, or something you think should be allowed to occur? IANAL, but I do work in the energy/electricity sector, and that sounds illegal. Utility regulations tend to be fairly strict.
> I don't see how Netflix paying Comcast to zero-rate Netflix traffic is fundamentally different from Amazon contracting with mail carriers to subsidize the cost of shipping for Amazon purchases, or even -- to use an example another commenter made -- an appliance manufacturer contracting with electrical utilities to subsidize the cost of electricity used by their appliances.
Strawman argument because zero-rating != net neutrality.
Amazon does NOT pay for prioritization, they get volume discounts... meaning they pay less to get their package "into the pipe" but the pipeline treats all packages equally. That is what net neutrality looks like - all content is treated equally in the pipe. The relevant example would be if Newegg packages were put on the broken slow trucks, or shoved in a pile until all the Amazo npackages have been delivered. This is obviously unacceptable and does not happen.
I'd love to hear more about your appliance manufacturer example because that sounds very unusual. However, again, that's fair because there's no issue of prioritization. Every appliance gets equal access, and brownouts impact all appliances equally. Electric non-neutrality would be: Chromebooks don't charge during a power outage, but Apple laptops do because they paid the electricity company extra. Also obviously unacceptable.
> I don't think there's anything wrong with an ISP prioritizing certain kinds of traffic over others, so long as it does not have an anti-competitive effect.
> I've heard people argue that zero-rating makes it harder for smaller content providers to compete, since they won't have the resources to subsidize their customers' traffic. As I said in another comment, that's just the nature of business.
A practice that makes it harder for smaller content providers is also known as an anti-competitive practice.
> As I said in another comment, that's just the nature of business. Being big affords you certain advantages, like economies of scale. This makes it easier to compete on price. Smaller companies have to compete in other ways.
True free markets don't have an entry fee, consumers are the only ones to decide who is competitive. For all it's imperfections, the internet is the freest market we have - any idea or product can enter the market, and every consumer has equal unrestricted access to the domain it's located at.
> In my view, the real problem with the telecom industry in the United States is a lack of competition [0], a problem caused at least in part by municipal [1] and state [2] governments. With more competition, net neutrality would be a non-issue.
This is definitely a contributing factor, net neutrality would be a suicidal proposal if we had competitive ISPs. That says something about the idea.
It's a nice hypothetical, but we must regulate based on reality, with the intent of creating freer markets.
And the reality is these FCC rollbacks are ment to further undermine competition. The big ISPs don't want to keep investing in network growth and competing on service, they want to auction access to a fixed-capacity network. Remember the good ol' days of Ma Bell and those lovely long-distance fees? I thought we killed the beast but Frankenstein's monster is back.
> they get volume discounts... meaning they pay less to get their package "into the pipe" but the pipeline treats all packages equally.
If Amazon paid the same price as everyone else to get their packages into the pipeline, they would send fewer of them, and more delivery resources would be available for everyone else, would there not? It's not just the speed of the trucks, but their size and who's available to load, unload and deliver.
> If Amazon paid the same price as everyone else to get their packages into the pipeline, they would send fewer of them, and more delivery resources would be available for everyone else, would there not? It's not just the speed of the trucks, but their size and who's available to load, unload and deliver.
They only send packages that people order. I'm not sure I see your point.
Roads can get congested with 100% Ford cars, but the road isn't discriminating against any other brand of car.
Amazon would either have to eat that cost or pass it on to their customers. There's only so much money, therefore fewer packages would be ordered from Amazon or they would be less profitable/competitive.
If the roads were congested with Fords because Fords got on the roads for 1/3 the price, then the outcome would be the same as if there was discrimination. Assuming the physical traits of the package are compatible, the pipe doesn't/can't discriminate. The operators do: government requirements, tolls, fares, delivery charges, etc.
> If the roads were congested with Fords because Fords got on the roads for 1/3 the price, then the outcome would be the same as if there was discrimination.
Of course. But there is no such brand.
Toll roads are actually a fairly good analogy for (non)net neutrality, since roads are also local monopolies.
If toll income goes back into building more roads, it's a win for consumers and businesses using the roads, but if it's for-profit or is diverted elsewhere (other state departments), then you don't want to develop more roads, because you'll force more people (and businesses) into using toll roads.
This is what local ISP monopolies want, and no consumer or other business wins. At best; Amazon in your analogy keeps status quo by paying a protection fee.
I'm fine with you arguing that net neutrality MIGHT be unnecessary if there were no ISP monopolies, but that isn't the reality, nor would it be easy to both keep enough ISPs on the market to weed out misuse, or as a consumer switch between these.
In the reality we live in now, net neutrality is VASTLY superior the alternative.
A for-profit toll road is only bad because it's a natural monopoly. Competitors can't (cost-effectively) stack (or tunnel) their roads.
Good thing that the subject of debate here is something very tiny and very light. Older wired technology requires right-of-way and permits. That scheme is effectively a natural monopoly, assuming there's only one provider. That doesn't necessarily mean the next time the ISP digs up their lines to replace them that competitors shouldn't be able to bury their wires at the same time as long as the cost was shared, even though the monopoly will fight like hell to prevent it, but local laws like that should be written in order to promote competition.
Newer wireless technology is much less cost/regulation prohibitive, and not much slower. This forces the incumbents to compete and provide a valuable service.
If local ISPs use their government-sanctioned monopoly to exhort consumers or the business who cater to them, let's crack down on that. That's a specific abuse that harms specific customers.
In the case where a local ISP wants to finance an expansion or upgrade of the network with prioritized service for select customers, while not degrading what existing customers are paying for, I don't see the harm in that, especially in competitive markets, in which case the only reason for the upgrade is because the market, not a group of bureaucrats, demands it.
> Good thing that the subject of debate here is something very tiny and very light. Older wired technology requires right-of-way and permits. That scheme is effectively a natural monopoly, assuming there's only one provider. That doesn't necessarily mean the next time the ISP digs up their lines to replace them that competitors shouldn't be able to bury their wires at the same time as long as the cost was shared, even though the monopoly will fight like hell to prevent it, but local laws like that should be written in order to promote competition.
Yes, local laws like that should be written differently, but they're not, because they're lobbied (by the local ISP) not to.
> Newer wireless technology is much less cost/regulation prohibitive, and not much slower. This forces the incumbents to compete and provide a valuable service.
One might hope, but I'm not holding my breath for wireless ever competing with wired internet, on speed in relation to (no) caps.
> If local ISPs use their government-sanctioned monopoly to exhort consumers or the business who cater to them, let's crack down on that. That's a specific abuse that harms specific customers.
Yes, we should, but again, this isn't the case.
> In the case where a local ISP wants to finance an expansion or upgrade of the network with prioritized service for select customers, while not degrading what existing customers are paying for, I don't see the harm in that, especially in competitive markets, in which case the only reason for the upgrade is because the market, not a group of bureaucrats, demands it.
Again, it's a well sounding hypothetical, the only problem being it's never happened, nor do I expect it to ever do, because it will either degrade existing customers through stagnation (not following bandwidth inflation) or purposefully to push as many as possible to more expensive service.
In a non-proven utopia, net neutrality is unnecessary, which I agreed with earlier, but again, we're not there, and we disagree about us ever getting there.
> If Amazon paid the same price as everyone else to get their packages into the pipeline, they would send fewer of them, and more delivery resources would be available for everyone else, would there not?
No. High volume allows the shipper to operate at a higher scale, with lower costs, and they pass along some of the savings in the form of a volume discount to Amazon.
I think you're missing the part about scale. Amazon is not taking away resources, their volume creates capacity and lowers prices.
Let's say UPS has 1 truck profitably serving a neighborhood route before Amazon comes along, delivering K packages per day operating at $N/day. The current businesses customers pay $M per package, that's the average delivery cost factoring for fluctuating actual delivery costs (operating costs are mostly fixed, a day with fewer deliveries is less profitable than many deliveries).
Now Amazon enters the scene and doubles the package volume. What happens? Assuming the first truck was well utilized, UPS will buy a second truck and split the route in half. Operating costs per house goes down because the routes are shorter, the distribution hub services more trucks, and maintenance operates at a higher scale.
Every previous business customer will pay $M or less - pick up costs are the same, but delivery from the UPS hub to the customer is lower due to volume. Amazon will pay even less because they get a volume discount from UPS; that discount reflects lower pickup costs for UPS, receiving a full truck load of packages from one Amazon distribution center costs less than picking up packages from multiple small businesses. Plus other factors like Amazon's ability to pre-sort within their warehouse on behalf of UPS.
At no point are small businesses competing with Amazon for delivery. The delivery company needs to grow, so they do grow, and as a result everyone from consumers to small businesses to massive corporations benefits.
The issue is that teleconglomerations do not want to grow. They have accrued tremendous organizational and technical debt which requires significant investment to overcome - generating large profits long-term, but only after a couple years of poor profits / shareholder dividends.
That's why we're seeing this "net neutrality issue". To be blunt, it's a fucking idiotic excuse for badly managed uncompetitive companies to sit on their laurels of regional monopolization. They're so short sighted that they can't fix their internal problems, and their size enables them to squash disruption, so their strategy is to use lobbying in order to slow down the growth of the internet (and our nation) to match their inefficiencies by charging both ends of the connection.
To tie it back to your example - this is like UPS not buying a new truck because they only have one parking space, then forcing Amazon and small businesses to bid for limited delivery capacity and charging customers based on where their package shipped from... all because their management takes 8 years to fund, design, approve, and construct a new parking space.
There is no excuse for this behavior. It's utterly absurd from any political/economic stance.
There's also no excuse for this red-herring. "At the 10Mbps/1Mbps threshold—which captures slower DSL technology in addition to cable and fiber—about 90 percent of census blocks have at least two providers."[1]
UPS only buys the new truck because they have to in order to stay in business, just like competitive ISPs adding value to their service. Amazon would have to pay for prioritization if UPS suddenly became the only game in town, if it wanted to maintain the same delivery speed and prioritization were available. I was just challenging your assertion about the original UPS-Amazon comparison and that it's only "fundamentally different" in the absence of competition, which is a problem, but not one affecting all Americans.
I think that this comment is basically right about the economics of the situation, but because it focuses on economics it misjudges the ideal role of the Internet in society by considering it (only) as an aggregate of capital, i.e. an economic tool. Economic tools in this case work for the benefit of individuals on an individual self-interested basis.
However, the Internet also acts as a medium for communication and socializing, which has benefits to society which cannot be explained by direct benefits to individuals from their self-interested exploitation of the medium. As an example, consider a case where a person reads a moral argument online and chooses to act less selfishly than they would have otherwise. This has a negative direct effect on the individual's actual life, but the outcome of many such events is a net positive for society. So too is it a social benefit if, for example, people in an economically undeveloped city learn about the effects of wood fires on air quality and switch to electric or gas cooking. And these are not services that any individual pays for.
As such it is important that the Internet is regulated to ensure, among various other goals, that as many people may be socially connected via the network as is possible. However, the ongoing centralization of the network has resulted in the perception among many people that online social activity is becoming increasingly confined to fora in which self-expression is either officially restricted or may cause the poster to be targeted for harassment. In reality, this is a result of the fact that some people just don't get along, and you've either got to keep them on lockdown or separate them, cynical as it sounds. As such, the claim that, for example, big companies having an advantage is "just how business works" must be evaluated in light of the effects it's having on our social environment (which we depend on). In practice, some groups of dissatisfied people (of varying political views but we all know who I'm really concerned about) have started to avoid the mainstream altogether, and because small companies are at a "just business" disadvantage, people unsatisfied with mainstream Western online media often turn to media sources owned by countries such as Russia or Qatar, or subsidized by billionaires with questionable motives, and so forth. It stands to reason that encouraging the network to grow in a way that supports "grassroots" alternatives to social media may limit the ability of unscrupulous actors with capital to influence politics.
It's always been my understanding that limiting group size reduces conflict and so if net neutrality gives smaller companies an "unfair" advantage and leads to lower economic growth, I think it would still be a good thing. But primarily, I want to emphasize that the Internet is not just a service provided to individuals.
I agree that bandwidth is not scarce in the same way as other goods. However, the fact remains that network infrastructure is expensive and it makes sense to pass more of the costs of that infrastructure onto those who derive more value from it (that is to say, those who use more of the available bandwidth).
What's wrong with Whirlpool subsidizing the electricity use of their customers? So long as the electrical utility allows any appliance manufacturer -- not just Whirlpool -- to participate in such a program, I don't see a problem. Like the original commenter, I see it as fundamentally no different than certain retailers subsidizing the cost of shipping for purchases.
You might argue that smaller appliance manufacturers don't have the resources to participate in such a program, but that's just the nature of business. Being big affords you certain advantages, like economies of scale. Smaller companies have to compete in other ways.
> However, the fact remains that network infrastructure is expensive and it makes sense to pass more of the costs of that infrastructure onto those who derive more value from it (that is to say, those who use more of the available bandwidth).
Which you do by charging different prices for different bandwidth or different amounts of traffic, just like you charge electricity based on the energy used?!
> What's wrong with Whirlpool subsidizing the electricity use of their customers?
Nothing is wrong with it, it's just nonsense. A business cannot subsidize the costs of using their product, at best they can sell you a package with the future costs already included in the purchase price, if they want to avoid going bankrupt.
> So long as the electrical utility allows any appliance manufacturer -- not just Whirlpool -- to participate in such a program, I don't see a problem.
... and at the same price, yes, then everything would be fine. And completely pointless, because you'd simply end up pre-paying for the electricity with the purchase instead of when you actually use it.
> You might argue that smaller appliance manufacturers don't have the resources to participate in such a program
That contradicts your earlier premise that any manufacturer could participate in the program.
> but that's just the nature of business.
This is not about the business, but about the customer. Whether it's "the nature of business" or not, it limits competition, and limited competition tends to limit innovation and to increase prices ... if you like that as a customer, then I guess you should be against net neutrality.
> Being big affords you certain advantages, like economies of scale. Smaller companies have to compete in other ways.
That's essentially an argument for monopolies. If you prefer to buy from monopolies ... strange, but sure, you probably should oppose anti-trust law in general.
In fact, if net neutrality regulation creates additional compliance costs it might actually reduce competition by increasing the barriers to entry for new ISPs.
2. I think most people would agree that the Internet should generally remain a level playing field for all businesses.
However, it's not clear that net neutrality regulation is necessary to maintain such a level playing field. It wasn't necessary in the past. Moreover, there is potential for consumer benefit associated with some kinds of content discrimination, which net neutrality regulation might unjustly prohibit.
The reality is that if the US broadband industry was competitive we wouldn't be having this argument. We should fix that first, then see if we still need net neutrality regulation.