Sure: some content is more important than other content and should receive higher priority.
Did you read any of my posts in the thread I linked? I outlined my argument there quite a bit.
It feels like the goalposts moved quite a lot there.
The previous claim was that we needed net neutrality because so many people literally have to deal with a monopoly ISP and have no choice.
But if that’s maybe not the case, now we need it because it’s a hassle to make a few phone calls to switch companies?
I don’t think that’s a good enough reason. There are lots of products I use where it’s a major pain in the ass to switch to another provider. I bet you can think of a few others. Should we have regulation requiring those products to have certain features? I think we should not. We should let individual customers make their own decisions.
OK, first, do you agree that the person who the OP was arguing was factually wrong? That claim was that NN prevents ISPs from charging more based on use. That’s wrong in that I would pay more for higher speed services with higher data caps and Netflix would pay more to put more content on the web.
Do you agree with the above? Just want to make sure we’re on the same page there.
OK, back to your goalposts, my initial post on that pointed out that many people have only one or two choices. My very first statement was that 67% have two or fewer options, so I don’t understand why you’re saying that my claim that having a duopoly is a movement of the goalposts.
The fact that the ISPs make it extremely cumbersome to move from one to the other is another argument for NN. Do you agree with that? They try and lock people in with contracts and discounts. Sure, I could pay more and not be locked in, but now I’m paying more for the same service just so I have the option to move to another ISP that may be doing the same shenanigans. And, it’s not just “a hassle to make a few phone calls”, I’m currently locked into a contract that would cost me money to break. I also have a DVR service for life that I would lose if I switch companies. So, it would be more than just a few phone calls – it would be money out the door and lost services. Then, I have to take time off from work so the new company can wire up the house.
On that particular subject, your minimizing the effort and cost is not a great way to argue, IMO. I have never said, for example, “why do the ISPs care about a few more regulations.”
Further, a duopoly would not typically be considered a well-functioning market. Do you agree? You have not convinced me that most areas are not monopolies or duopolies. I do not consider satellite or wireless, at least in their current forms, to be valid substitutes.
If you agree, do you agree that regulation can help when markets are malfunctioning?
Can individuals make those kind of free-market decisions when there are only one or two providers and the cost of switching between the two is high, either in real dollar terms or in time spent?
Is there any benefit to all of this? During the run up to the 2015 rule change, opponents of NN regulation claimed that it wasn’t necessary since the ISPs weren’t doing anything bad (they were, but just here and there). If the ISPs weren’t doing much to take advantage of the lack of regulation, and yet your cite says that service expanded rapidly between 2013 and 2015, I’m left to wonder what’s wrong with having the regulation? Is this just, all regulations are bad? That’s can’t be the case, since regulations are required when markets are not working properly (monopolies, duopolies, tragedy of the commons, information imbalances, etc.). So, why remove NN regulations? The internet was working fine when there was de facto NN. When ISPs started to fiddle with those fine workings (slowing some sources, etc.), then the FCC stepped in and said, stop it. The internet continued to grow and expand. What benefit will there be from the removal of these regs?
As I’ve already mentioned, if there were many ISPs to choose from and switching from one to the other was as easy as it was to switch long distance carriers, I’d probably be fine with the removal of NN rules.
Yes, I was part of that thread. If you believe that some content is more important than other content, who do you think should decide which content is more important?
I think it comes down to “Who should, and who should not, have the moment-by-moment power to intercept and change the signals that travel to and from your house?”
I agree that the person the OP is talking to is likely confused. The actual claim is non-specific enough that I can’t say that it’s 100% wrong, but it is mostly wrong.
I interpreted your statement about needing “multiple” ISPs as being “more than one”. I see that you meant “many”, so that’s a reasonable. How many, might I ask?
I definitely don’t agree that the hassle of switching is a sufficient reason for this sort of regulation.
I do not agree with that. Specifically, going through your list of cumbers: ISPs don’t make you have to stay home to have someone hook up different wiring. That’s a physical requirement of having data carried over wires. ISPs don’t make you sign contracts for extended times: they offer that along with a discount for doing so, like countless other businesses do. Giving up a bundled service (your DVR) that you really like doesn’t count as a hardship in my book either. There are tons of services that are only sold in a bundle.
That’s common in all kinds of industries, though. Bundling and contracts and discounts are all ways to get customers to not leave at the drop of a hat, but there are gains on both sides.
I could do my online shopping somewhere else, but I’m “locked in” to Amazon because I pre-paid extra for Prime and I get faster shipping.
I could buy individual DVD sets of television shows, but instead I buy a cable subscription that partially supports shows I don’t care about.
I could get my car, life, and home insurance from different companies, but I get them all from the same one because I get a discount and its fewer bills to pay.
Those are all things that make it harder for me to leave those services, but there’s nothing unfair about them. I made a conscious decision to get the extra discounts and lose some flexibility.
I agree that a duopoly is usually less good than having more participants. However, the change from Monopoly to Duopoly is large. Adding just a single competitor makes more of a difference than adding a second or third or tenth. And, just to clarify: I think that actual monopolies require heavy regulation. Although I don’t, for example, think that if you can get mobile internet, satellite internet, or a single wired cable ISP, that counts as a monopoly.
I think there are plenty of industries where there’s an effective duopoly (cell phones and computer operating systems come to mind) that’s reasonably functional.
Basically: I think it’s more complicated than that. It takes more than counting the number of entities to claim that a market is not functional, and I think most duopoly markets are mostly functional.
Did you not read the cite I linked to? It shows exactly that. 66% have 3 or more options for 10Mbps speeds. Again, that’s in 2015. Your cite in 2013 showed 33% had 3 or more. I don’t have any actual data for today, but I imagine that the number has increased further in the following 2-3 years.
Sure.
I think it’s a mistake to focus on switching cost. Because lower switching cost means lower innovation and diversity of offering.
I think personal computers are a good example. I’ve been a Mac user for over a decade. Lately, I’m not too happy with some of what Apple’s been making, but I’m heavily invested. Not just in things like software licenses, but in knowledge and muscle memory and system design. However hard it would be for you to switch ISPs, I bet it would be at least ten times as much effort for me to switch OSes. And the monetary cost of buying an OS license is minor. But I’m ok with that.
Imagine if there were regulations that made it easy for me to switch my computer OS? Maybe software has to be developed and sold for both. Or shortcuts and scripting languages have to be compatible. Those would make it easy to switch. But they would also have drastically slowed the personal computer revolution. If you have to release software for multiple platforms, then a lot less software gets released. Etc.
Obviously, that analogy doesn’t directly map onto ISPs very well. But what I’m trying to get at is that there are a lot of ways that the internet might go.
Regulation certainly has positive effects. But it also stifles innovation. There is an actual tradeoff. There’s no such thing as a regulation that’s only going to have an intended positive effect.
To the question of how many – I’ve mentioned 5 to 10 a few times already would be great would indicate a really well-functioning market.
Regarding your OS, Mac is not really a big competitor to PCs, being only about 10% of the market. Windows does effectively have a monopoly and has in fact been slapped with fines and sanctions when it acted on that power, so I’m not sure that’s a great example.
Insurance companies are likewise heavily regulated, much more than cable companies.
You have many options for insurance companies and for online purchases, so if Amazon and Allstate want to try and keep you there, I have no issue with that.
For the rest of your post, I think you and I will spend a lot of time arguing with each other and will not change each other’s minds. I’m not so worried about sensible regulations.
For you last sentence, my worry is that the lack of NN regulation will stifle innovation. I think there will likely be more innovation at the many startups that may get shoved aside when ISPs are allowed to discriminate based on the source than there will be at the giant multimedia companies that own the ISPs.
Anyway, we’ve both said our peace (piece?). We’re pretty far from the OP and I doubt we’ll make much more progress here.
Here’s what I sent that guy. If you can (politely, I hope) make corrections or additions, I would get more honesty points in this discussion if I make the corrections first, instead of having him force me into it.
The fundamental argument I’ve seen against net neutrality is based on false assumptions of competition and ownership.
The cable companies and other ISPs are not in competition with each other, and they are not held responsible by market forces. They have a regulated monopoly. As I understand it, I literally can’t choose my cable company. I’m stuck, and getting internet from a satellite company is completely impractical. This is why the cable companies routinely have horrible ratings from consumers. They don’t care what the customers think, because they aren’t held responsible.
What we have is companies in what is supposed to be well-regulated monopolies, like the gas company, or the electrical company, using technology that was invented by pubic entities (UCSB’s internet address used to be 3. Just 3, because they had the third computer on what would become ARPANET. The other 2 were UCLA and Stanford Research Institute). They use public lands (leased and paid for, I know), which are to be used in the public interest. Leasing land for pipes of cable is a good use of the land, but it needs to be used in the actual public interest.
What the ISPs want to do is take that situation and do whatever they want with it. They want to be able to charge Netflix (or whoever) at different rates just because they’re Netflix. Of course they can charge more because of more use, but they want to be able to charge someone more because they are partly in competition with them, or make Netflix slow and Hulu at normal speed because they have part ownership of Hulu. They want to count your data on your phone against your allotted data use unless you use their streaming service and see their ads. There are people who even claim the ISPs, using public land and publicly funded inventions, and a government-approved monopoly, should be able to block websites they don’t like, in general. Imagine if the phone company had said you couldn’t call someone because they had said bad things about the company, or calling Utah cost more than calling Arizona, because “Mormons are dumb”. We would never have stood for it.
This all is supported by the current GOP because they have even more blatantly than usual become public about how bought they are by the corporations. Anything good for big business is good for America. Profit for ATT will end up back in the little guy’s hands, supposedly. Except this isn’t true, because companies end up using their bankrolls to pay executives more and buy back stock, which pays very few normal people, and mainly benefits the big institutional shareholders (I know some of those are pension funds and so on). And trickle-down economics only goes so far (and not very) in the real world. We know now that the really rich people don’t buy more when you give them more. They already have what they want, and they stockpile the rest of the cash in tax shelters using dummy corporations.
Oh, and the ISPs claim that lower profits (caused by making them play fair with their monopolies) will cause lower investment in infrastructure. Except that’s not what they tell their investors on conference calls, which has been documented, because the calls have to be public for publicly held corps. So they’re lying to someone, and lying to their investors is a crime, and lying about investment going down makes them more money, so I think I know which one is the lie.
This all comes back to the attitude of “I built this” which we keep getting from privileged people, who think that they built their business and they can do anything they want with it, period, and their money should basically be exempt from tax, and “taxation is theft”, etc. They ignore their public education, the public education of the others around them that make an educated workforce and a society that has money to spend on their businesses. One of the worst local offenders I know thinks he did all the work to be a veterinarian, and he’s paying for lazy people who won’t work, and his taxes are an outrage. This from a guy who went to public school, drives on public roads, is protected by public safety agencies, and profits directly form a society that has been raised in ability to make income such that they can support his very boutique and not-very-necessary business. You know what happens to pets in poor countries? They die. The people even just die. No one has money to pay him $1000 to save the dog. The dog dies. He’s in a rich-country’s luxury business, but he has no conception of the investment that has been made to get him where he is. Because he had to study for himself, he thinks he’s a self-made man. His perspective is about an inch wide. Take these people and make them executives, in ISPs, with their total lack of experience in being concerned for others, and lack of awareness of others and how they’ve been helped, and this is what we get.
Someone would have to be astonishingly naive to believe that this will actually result in lower prices for anyone. Rather, their bundle and package deals will just be new excuses to gouge us for using the web’s most popular services. There is no conceivable way the savings would actually be passed to the consumer.
This is what I don’t understand. If a company is pushing for something, then it’s because the company thinks it will make more money, because that’s what their goal is. Guess where that additional money will come from? Consumers.
Net neutrality is one of those issues that I have no formed a strong opinion on because I do not know enough about it. It seems that most posters here favor net neutrality, so I guess I just have one question at the moment:
What if the ISP uses its power for good instead of evil? What if it prioritizes data from sites that we all use, but throttles or even blocks pirate sites from overseas, porno advertising, malware, known child pornography, etc. If I haven’t stated it right it’s because I have no knowledge of the technology. So, when answering, please give me some leeway.
What if the ISP’s definition of “good” and “evil” is different from yours or mine? Do you want some private enterprise arbitrarily controlling your view of the world? If content is actually illegal it should be dealt with by legal means directed against the provider and/or consumer. If it isn’t illegal, it isn’t the business of any telecommunications carrier to interfere with it.
Or what if the ISP uses censorship or preferential treatment for self-serving purposes, which is the more likely possibility, striking shady deals with preferred partners who get preferential access and giving competitors degraded access or none at all? Or what if government directs it to censor certain content, as it does in China?
Those are all disturbing possibilities, and the Internet is much more vulnerable to those kinds of abuses because not only can data paths be readily identified, but content types can also be discerned and given arbitrarily discriminatory handling based on virtually any rules the ISP might dream up.
The thing that really shows the heart of the ISPs’ argument is that when they note that some internet traffic is critical, like for utilities, hospitals, emergency services, it’s an excuse to scrap NN. They don’t do the noble thing and ask for permission to meet with the regulatory agency and make a list of top critical priority traffic, which would make no extra profit. They act like it’s a binary choice, and their choice is always “No”.
I wrote “when none of the ISP” . While ISPs are unlikely to restrict your access to Netflix, what make you think that any of them will be willing to give the same high priority to the traffic to the obscure service you enjoy because you’re a nerd but interest only 0.1% of their customers?
And even if you find an ISP that does, what do you do when you realize that for this other service that you also enjoy, you’d need to suscribe to a different ISP?
Are you hoping that the invisible hand of the market will somehow lead at least one ISP to apply net neutrality in practice to please customers like you?
Well, couldn’t we police the ISP? IOW, do not have net neutrality, but outlaw those “shady deals” while letting ISPs filter malware, spam, child pornography, etc.
I’m almost on board with net neutrality because of the nature of the internet and how such a scheme has lead to this technological revolution. But before I turn in my conservative card on this issue, I just have these handful of remaining questions bouncing around.
Why should we treat every packet of data the same when we all know that every packet of data is not the same. Suppose I have a temporary low bandwidth issue. I would want my outside security camera to keep working and put a halt to my daughter downloading her 15,214th duck lips face pic of the day. If my ISP says that they can do that for me, why should that be illegal?
That’s allowed under NN. NN states consumers are allowed access to all ‘lawful internet content’. That would let ISPs filter out child porn and possibly malware and spam. Even if it didn’t allow a spam/malware filter, it wouldn’t surprise me if both sides could agree on that one.
Your ISP doesn’t do that for you now and probably won’t ever do that. However, you can do that on your own. As it stands, you can log in to your router and turn off block her phone while allowing your camera. I’m sure some routers can even do these types of things on the fly with QoS settings.
Furthermore, there’s a difference between you telling your ISP what you want to give a higher priority to and them deciding that for you.
What if they said ‘looks like your connection is having some problems right now, we’ve restricted uploads from your location to only instagram’?
Okay, but let’s not fight the hypo. I don’t understand the technology, but it seems that we have agreed that some packets of data are objectively (or at least by a clear majority subjectively) higher priority than others.
Further, I think we agree (or do opponents of NN not agree?) that it is improper if I pay for Comcast internet that Comcast throttle Netflix service so that I pay for their own on demand service.
But, can’t we agree, either objectively, or majorly subjectively that say, we will promote Netflix and reputable streaming services from 7pm-12am and throttle the hell out of Pirate Bay or BitTorrent during those times so that more customers can watch legal movies?
But they’re not, that’s the thing. Would you be okay with ISPs telling you that you can’t stream your cameras to the internet during 7pm-12am because people are trying to watch Netflix?
Yes, that’s basically what people that are for NN want. But you have to take it further than Netflix, it needs to apply to all traffic, not just things that you feel are important. What one person thinks should get priority, another person has no interest in.
Nope. All traffic needs to get treated equally. If Pirate Bay or BitTorrent are illegal, that’s one thing. If they’re legal to use, then they needed to get the same priority as Netflix or FoxNews or PornHub or Vonage or Facetime.