Obama says FCC should reclassify internet as a utility

[rb224315]

That American Thinker opinion piece is from 2010. A lot has happened since then.

So?  The Constitution was ratified in 1788.  That was a long time ago.  A lot has happened since then.  Maybe we need to regulate it.

Such as the two largest cable companies in the nation (Comcast and Time Warner cable) about to become one super colossal media company. I'm for more competition — not less.

If the government wants to increase competition it doesn't need new regulations.  It can use existing anti-trust law to do so.  I think I mentioned that already.

[aligncare]

So?  The Constitution was ratified in 1788.  That was a long time ago.  A lot has happened since then.  Maybe we need to regulate it.

If the government wants to increase competition it doesn't need new regulations.  It can use existing anti-trust law to do so.  I think I mentioned that already.

Thus far I have not argued for more government but for net neutrality – however it's achieved.

Even Tim Wu, the man who coined the term net neutrality, will tell you that the fast lane idea isn’t what it seems. “The fast lane is not a literal truth,” he says. “But it’s a sense that you should have a fair shot.” On the modern internet, as Wu indicates, the real issue is that such a small number of internet service providers now control the pipes that reach out to U.S. consumers—and that number is getting even smaller, with Comcast looking to acquire Time Warner, one of its biggest rivals. The real issue is that the Comcasts and Verizons are becoming too big and too powerful. Because every web company has no choice but to go through these ISPs, the Comcasts and the Verizons may eventually have too much freedom to decide how much companies must pay for fast speeds.

We shouldn’t waste so much breath on the idea of keeping the network completely neutral. It isn’t neutral now. What we should really be doing is looking for ways we can increase competition among ISPs—ways we can prevent the Comcasts and the AT&Ts from gaining so much power that they can completely control the market for internet bandwidth. Sure, we don’t want ISPs blocking certain types of traffic. And we don’t want them delivering their own stuff at 10 gigabits per second and everyone else’s stuff at 1 gigabit. But competition is also the best way to stop these types of extreme behavior.

[Fishrrman]

rb wrote above:
[[ Here's a good way to think of Net Neutrality:  Obama supports it.  Has one single thing Obama has done led to more freedom or better lives for Americans in general?  Why would this be different? ]]

My thoughts as well.

Just as the ultimate goal of the "climate change" folks is less about saving the environment than it is about  "control" -- gaining more control over individuals' daily lives -- the ultimate and covert goal of "net neutrality" is probably also about control -- government gaining more control over the net and over those entities that supply access to it.

What is government's historical track record in regards to such regulation?

From having started with a 300bps modem (integrated into a Panasonic desktop telephone -- had to hand-build a cable to get it connected to my Apple //c in 1986), through outfits like GEnie, to "high-speed" modems, to the first DSL, to the fairly high-speed broadband I use now, the progress of communications technology for both individual, corporate, business and institutional usage has done just fine so far.

I say "leave it alone" for the time being.

None of this "neutrality" crap.
"Neutrality crap" = "government crap".

We know how that goes...

[Fishrrman]

mass wrote above:
[[ I think you guys are being a bit paranoid about net neutrality.  At this point the issue has nothing to do with content and everything to do with what ISP's can do in terms of charging for access ...]]

Ah, there's the key phrase emphasized above.

"At this point...."

And we know where that leads.
Where it ALWAYS leads, insofar as the government is concerned.

No thanks.

[aligncare]

The issue is not as simple as 'if Obama is for it, I'm against it.'

I've been stuck in bed today and had lots of time to read up. There are heavy hitters on both sides of the argument, and they all had rational points in supporting their position.

I suggest if anyone is still trying to decide which side of the issue to be on based on ideology, do some reading first before taking a knee-jerk position.

[MACVSOG68]

The issue is not as simple as 'if Obama is for it, I'm against it.'

I've been stuck in bed today and had lots of time to read up. There are heavy hitters on both sides of the argument, and they all had rational points in supporting their position.

I suggest if anyone is still trying to decide which side of the issue to be on based on ideology, do some reading first before taking a knee-jerk position.

                                                                       

[rb224315]

The issue is not as simple as 'if Obama is for it, I'm against it.'

That's not what I said, so please don't put words in my mouth.

What one single issue of policy has Obama gotten right?  Name one of any significance . . .

Seriously, I can't think of one.

Why would he suddenly be right about this one?  I understand the law of averages, the proverbial blind squirrel, etc., but I can also see Obama's track record.

If he wants to increase competition and thereby increase the performance and availability of the Internet, he can do it with the tools he already has.  More regulation will certainly have "unintended" consequences that will result in problems that will, of course, require more government intervention.

No, this is not a reflexive opposition to Obama because he's a political opponent.  It's the recognition that Obama can be depended upon to choose the wrong solution to every problem.

[DCPatriot]

The issue is not as simple as 'if Obama is for it, I'm against it.'

I've been stuck in bed today and had lots of time to read up. There are heavy hitters on both sides of the argument, and they all had rational points in supporting their position.

I suggest if anyone is still trying to decide which side of the issue to be on based on ideology, do some reading first before taking a knee-jerk position.

Normally, good advice.

But we've got 6 years of examples from this Administration/Regime, that clearly demonstrate a willingness to break...set fire...transform whatever the original intent of a bill or law was meant to be.

To the point that we take the position...If Obama likes something, most Americans should not.

[aligncare]

That's not what I said, so please don't put words in my mouth.

What one single issue of policy has Obama gotten right?  Name one of any significance . . .

Seriously, I can't think of one.

Why would he suddenly be right about this one?  I understand the law of averages, the proverbial blind squirrel, etc., but I can also see Obama's track record.

If he wants to increase competition and thereby increase the performance and availability of the Internet, he can do it with the tools he already has.  More regulation will certainly have "unintended" consequences that will result in problems that will, of course, require more government intervention.

No, this is not a reflexive opposition to Obama because he's a political opponent.  It's the recognition that Obama can be depended upon to choose the wrong solution to every problem.

No need to personalize my post. I wasn't thinking of you when I said what I said.

What I said was this is a complex issue and that if one is not familiar with the issue it requires some study to get a handle on it. That's all.

[katzenjammer]

Normally, good advice.

But we've got 6 years of examples from this Administration/Regime, that clearly demonstrate a willingness to break...set fire...transform whatever the original intent of a bill or law was meant to be.

To the point that we take the position...If Obama likes something, most Americans should not.

Yes, it is safe to say, at this point, there is not one thing this regime can be trusted on.  In fact, it is to the point that it is downright suicidal to do so.

[massadvj]

rb wrote above:
[[ Here's a good way to think of Net Neutrality:  Obama supports it.  Has one single thing Obama has done led to more freedom or better lives for Americans in general?  Why would this be different? ]]

My thoughts as well.

Just as the ultimate goal of the "climate change" folks is less about saving the environment than it is about  "control" -- gaining more control over individuals' daily lives -- the ultimate and covert goal of "net neutrality" is probably also about control -- government gaining more control over the net and over those entities that supply access to it.

What is government's historical track record in regards to such regulation?

From having started with a 300bps modem (integrated into a Panasonic desktop telephone -- had to hand-build a cable to get it connected to my Apple //c in 1986), through outfits like GEnie, to "high-speed" modems, to the first DSL, to the fairly high-speed broadband I use now, the progress of communications technology for both individual, corporate, business and institutional usage has done just fine so far.

I say "leave it alone" for the time being.

None of this "neutrality" crap.
"Neutrality crap" = "government crap".

We know how that goes...

"Leave it alone" means net neutrality because net neutrality is currently the law of the land.

[Luis Gonzalez]

Yes, we should read more about it.

Despite what you may have heard, net neutrality is not about protecting consumers from rapacious Internet Service Providers (ISPs).  It would not make broadband more available in rural America, or lower prices for small businesses.  And it has nothing to do with protecting free speech or dissenting voices.  Net neutrality is crony capitalism pure and simple – an effort by one group of private interests to enrich itself at the expense of another group by using the power of the state.

For all the arcane talk about “Title II” and “common carriage,” this is not complicated.  The rules favored by net neutrality advocates would ban or restrict payments from one type of business – “edge providers” – to another type of business – broadband ISPs – while placing no limits on what ISPs charge consumers.  It is easy to see why edge providers like Netflix would lobby for such rules, but difficult to understand how they would benefit consumers or serve the public interest.

Indeed, the arguments advanced by net neutrality advocates don’t withstand even momentary scrutiny.  Do broadband providers enjoy too much market power – are they “monopolists”?  Not according to the Federal Communication Commission, which waxes eloquent about the strong performance of the broadband marketplace, citing the billions of dollars invested each year and the rapid increase in speeds and performance.  And while much is made of consumers’ limited choices, the broadband market is actually less concentrated than the markets for search engines, social networks, and over-the-top video services: discriminatory regulation of ISPs cannot be justified on the basis of market power.

Other arguments for regulation are just as flawed. For example, net neutrality advocates say that without new regulations, ISPs would discriminate against Internet start-ups.  But such discriminatory pricing hasn’t occurred so far, and no one can explain why ISPs would want to impede the ongoing explosion of innovative content and applications that makes their services valuable in the first place – especially since such companies pose no competitive threat to the ISPs.  Nor can anyone cite an example of an American (as opposed to Chinese or Russian) ISP muzzling a dissenting voice or limiting free speech.  In fact, to the extent that any firms in the Internet ecosystem have issues with free speech, it is the content providers like YouTube and Yahoo, who are under constant pressure (which they mostly, and laudably, resist) to take down “offensive” material.

Finally, there’s the argument about fast lanes and slow lanes, or, in regulatory jargon, “paid prioritization.”  The simple reality is that edge providers like Netflix require prioritization for their services to work.  It’s just the “paid” part they don’t like.

The key to understanding net neutrality lies in the fact that broadband ISPs operate in what economists call a “two-sided market.”  One side consists of consumers, who value access to content and applications; the other side consists of content and application providers, who value using the network to reach the customers.  Such markets are not unusual: newspapers, for example, serve both advertisers and subscribers.  The challenge for such firms is to set prices for each customer group in such a way as to attract the optimal mix:  newspapers need enough advertisers to keep subscription prices low, but they don’t want too many ads because it would drive away readers.

The FCC’s primary theory of net neutrality regulation is that the edge providers generate so much innovation and other “external” benefits that they should be subsidized by the other side (that is, by consumers) through a rule that forces consumers to pay 100 percent of the costs of the network while edge providers pay zero.  This is a fine theory – but there is not a scintilla of empirical evidence to support it.  Indeed, academic research suggests the external benefits generated by ISP’s investments in broadband infrastructure are likely at least as large as the benefits from innovation at the edge.

At the end of the day, the one unarguable fact about net neutrality regulation is that edge providers, big and small, and those who fund them and profit from their success, have a powerful economic interest in getting the FCC to guarantee free access to the ISPs’ networks.

Many net neutrality supporters are no doubt sincere in believing regulation is needed to “protect the open Internet,” and there is nothing illegal or even immoral about wealthy and well-connected private companies seeking to advance their interests through the use of state power.  But the results can prove highly damaging.  In the case of net neutrality, the danger is that the dynamic, pragmatic, business-and-engineering-driven approach that has made the Internet such a remarkable success will be replaced by an inevitably static, bureaucratic, politicized regulatory regime, not unlike the one that oversees the U.S. Postal Service.

On the global front, a decision by the U.S. to embrace economic and political control of the Internet would legitimize the efforts of tyrants everywhere to impose far more repressive forms of statist intervention.

From a consumer perspective, net neutrality regulation is just one more government-mandated rip-off – another few bucks out of our pockets to subsidize a politically influential interest group.  So, the next time you hear an over-the-top video provider arguing for net neutrality, keep this in mind: there’s nothing neutral about it.

https://www.aei.org/publication/theres-nothing-neutral-about-net-neutrality/

So, on one side we have Obama supporting the idea of "net neutrality" and on the other hand, we have the American Enterprise Institute against it.

I know which opinion I value more.

[Luis Gonzalez]

Here's The Cato Institute on net neutrality:

On May 15 the FCC announced a proposed rule that would govern the relationship between content providers and internet service providers.  Consumer groups argued the proposed rule was not strong enough because it did not ban differential arrangements between them.

The underlying economic issues are several.  Should the government concern itself with the relationship between the “creators” of things and the “transporters” of them?  In particular should economic profits go just to the creators of things?  Is it “wrong” for the transporters to extract some as well?  What if a creator of content and a transporter want to vertically integrate or enter into a long-term contract to end the costly dispute between them over the division of any economic profits?  Should such arrangements be forbidden because of the possibility such an entity would refuse to transport the content of a different creator?

These issues are not new.  In fact they first arose between railroads and the creators of “content” i.e. farmers, mines, steel mills etc. in the 19th century.  The political resolution of these issues was the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887.  It took about one hundred years for the experiment in transportation common carrier rate regulation to end.  Scholars have concluded that rate regulation raised rather than lowered transportation prices.  And the public has come to the same conclusion because in the quarter century since the end of transportation rate regulation, prices have decreased dramatically.  For a discussion of the rise and fall of transportation regulation see this article by Thomas Gale Moore.

In “Antecedents to Net Neutrality” Bruce Owen explicitly makes the link between the concerns of traditional transportation common carrier regulation and the contemporary notion of “Internet neutrality.”  Net neutrality policies could be implemented only through detailed price regulation, an approach that failed to improve consumer welfare in the transportation sector. History thus counsels against adoption of most versions of net neutrality.  Christopher Yoo has written a detailed history of how difficult common carriage regulation was to implement in traditional telecommunications regulation.  A shorter version will appear in the summer issue of Regulation.

The public debate over net neutrality also does not reflect the increased variation in the price and quality of its services that already exists.  Innovations such as private peering, multihoming, secondary peering, server farms, and content delivery networks have caused the Internet’s traditional one-size-fits-all architecture to be replaced by one that is more heterogeneous. Related, network providers have begun to employ an increasingly varied array of business arrangements and pricing. These changes reflect network providers’ attempts to reduce cost, manage congestion, and maintain quality of service. Policy proposals to constrain this variation risk harming these beneficial developments.

http://www.cato.org/blog/fccs-net-neutrality-rules

[aligncare]

Here's The Cato Institute on net neutrality:

http://www.cato.org/blog/fccs-net-neutrality-rules

Finally, a simple and clear presentation of the issue. That's what I've been looking for.

For those of us over age xx –just you never mind– Internet technology is a tough nut to crack.

[aligncare]

One more thing. From the AEI piece.

And while much is made of consumers’ limited choices, the broadband market is actually less concentrated than the markets for search engines, social networks, and over-the-top video services: discriminatory regulation of ISPs cannot be justified on the basis of market power.

I don't have to pay for search engines, social networks, or over-the-top video services, but I do have to send a check every month to my ISP. So if it appears the market is concentrating, such as with the Comcast purchase of Time Warner cable, that does limit competition and could potentially increase prices to consumers.

[rb224315]

Net "Neutrality" isn't about neutrality, it's about increasing government power.  It started as a Marxist effort "to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control."  Supporters of this kind of government action, like so many other cases, are supporting not some "neutrality" effort (which is a solution looking for a problem, frankly).  They are supporting the effort to wrest control of the Internet from private companies and give it to the government.  Big companies are no friend of the little guy, but given the choice of big companies vs. big government, at least big companies don't have the built-in right to use force to achieve their aims.  When they get in bed with big government, they suddenly have the force they need.  See Obamacare's relationship with insurance companies for an example.

From the WSJ (it's from 2010!! and was linked in the American Thinker article upthread):

"The net neutrality vision for government regulation of the Internet began with the work of Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor who founded the liberal lobby Free Press in 2002."

"Mr. McChesney wrote in the Marxist journal Monthly Review that "any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself." Mr. McChesney told me in an interview that some of his comments have been "taken out of context." He acknowledged that he is a socialist and said he was "hesitant to say I'm not a Marxist."

"For a man with such radical views, Mr. McChesney and his Free Press group have had astonishing influence. Mr. Genachowski's press secretary at the FCC, Jen Howard, used to handle media relations at Free Press. The FCC's chief diversity officer, Mark Lloyd, co-authored a Free Press report calling for regulation of political talk radio.

"Free Press has been funded by a network of liberal foundations that helped the lobby invent the purported problem that net neutrality is supposed to solve. They then fashioned a political strategy similar to the one employed by activists behind the political speech restrictions of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill. The methods of that earlier campaign were discussed in 2004 by Sean Treglia, a former program officer for the Pew Charitable Trusts, during a talk at the University of Southern California. Far from being the efforts of genuine grass-roots activists, Mr. Treglia noted, the campaign-finance reform lobby was controlled and funded by foundations like Pew."

[Luis Gonzalez]

One more thing. From the AEI piece.

I don't have to pay for search engines, social networks, or over-the-top video services, but I do have to send a check every month to my ISP. So if it appears the market is concentrating, such as with the Comcast purchase of Time Warner cable, that does limit competition and could potentially increase prices to consumers.

Exactly.

There are less of those things that you don't have to pay for than those that you do.

In fact, your don't even have to write that check if you don't want to. You could simply go to your local library and access the Internet from there, or you could go hang out at your local Dunkin Donuts or at a myriad other places that offer you free WiFi as an enticement to get you in there.

We however want to access the Internet 24/7 from the comfort of our own homes AND we want to use it to its fullest capacity AND at its highest speed AND we want to pay what we want to pay, not what the market demands that we pay AND we don't think it "fair" that others able to pay more should get better service.

If you think about it, back on the dial up days Internet access was incredibly expensive (I think my old Compuserve account came with two hour per month of access and anything beyond that I had to pay extra for) and today's access is cheap in comparison, PLUS there are more ISPs.

The existence of large companies does not necessarily mean that competition will be limited. The fact that The Olive Garden exists has not impacted the number of smaller Italian restaurants and I am seeing more cell service providers pop up day in and day out in spite of AT&T's apparent lock on the market.

There isn't a problem here, but someone is trying to fabricate a problem and paint government as the solution to it so that (as it is the case with most anything that government brushes up against) when greater problems are created as a result of government interference, government can argue that more government is the solution to problems created by more government.

Let the market take care of itself.

[aligncare]

Exactly.

There are less of those things that you don't have to pay for than those that you do.

In fact, your don't even have to write that check if you don't want to. You could simply go to your local library and access the Internet from there, or you could go hang out at your local Dunkin Donuts or at a myriad other places that offer you free WiFi as an enticement to get you in there.

We however want to access the Internet 24/7 from the comfort of our own homes AND we want to use it to its fullest capacity AND at its highest speed AND we want to pay what we want to pay, not what the market demands that we pay AND we don't think it "fair" that others able to pay more should get better service.

If you think about it, back on the dial up days Internet access was incredibly expensive (I think my old Compuserve account came with two hour per month of access and anything beyond that I had to pay extra for) and today's access is cheap in comparison, PLUS there are more ISPs.

The existence of large companies does not necessarily mean that competition will be limited. The fact that The Olive Garden exists has not impacted the number of smaller Italian restaurants and I am seeing more cell service providers pop up day in and day out in spite of AT&T's apparent lock on the market.

There isn't a problem here, but someone is trying to fabricate a problem and paint government as the solution to it so that (as it is the case with most anything that government brushes up against) when greater problems are created as a result of government interference, government can argue that more government is the solution to problems created by more government.

Let the market take care of itself.

 

[Bigun]

Yes, it is safe to say, at this point, there is not one thing this regime can be trusted on.  In fact, it is to the point that it is downright suicidal to do so.

 


I wouldn't trust them to wash my socks much less anything important!

[massadvj]

One more thing. From the AEI piece.

I don't have to pay for search engines, social networks, or over-the-top video services, but I do have to send a check every month to my ISP. So if it appears the market is concentrating, such as with the Comcast purchase of Time Warner cable, that does limit competition and could potentially increase prices to consumers.

It is if you need a cable line.  But last year I bought a tablet with wi-fi capability and no 4G or phone.  I find there's usually an open wi-fi network available pretty much everywhere.  I imagine if I was a starving metro-sexual bohemian, I could easily get by without paying for access through an ISP.

Also, just to clarify for those who are making this a left vs right issue.  Net neutrality was the law under the Bush administration as well.  It goes all the way back to the beginning of the Internet. 

[DCPatriot]

It is if you need a cable line.  But last year I bought a tablet with wi-fi capability and no 4G or phone.  I find there's usually an open wi-fi network available pretty much everywhere.  I imagine if I was a starving metro-sexual bohemian, I could easily get by without paying for access through an ISP.

Also, just to clarify for those who are making this a left vs right issue.  Net neutrality was the law under the Bush administration as well.

As was the right for illegal immigrant children who resided in foreign countries not bordering on the United States to be granted automatic asylum for reasons such as trying to avoid being victims of the sex-slave trade...or fear of life because of dangerous gangs.

Obama expanded that through Executive Order to include relatives of said children.

See how this Administration works?

[massadvj]

As was the right for illegal immigrant children who resided in foreign countries not bordering on the United States to be granted automatic asylum for reasons such as trying to avoid being victims of the sex-slave trade...or fear of life because of dangerous gangs.

Obama expanded that through Executive Order to include relatives of said children.

See how this Administration works?

I agree.  There is no need to turn the ISP's into utilities.  The Internet is access to a protocol that was developed by the US military.  From the very beginning the government decided that everyone was entitled to equal access to that protocol.  The government was completely entitled to do this.  They own the protocol, they can say how it is to be distributed.

The thing that bothers me about changing the system is I hate it when the government sets up an infrastructure, then honest people build businesses based on the rules that have been established, and then someone in the channel of distribution gets more power than everyone else, so they buy the influence to change the rules.  That is what the ISP's are doing.  The act of reversing the policy of net neutrality is the de facto taking of property from eBay, Amazon, Netflix and every other Internet-based business that has come to depend on equal access.  All of these businesses built what they built in good faith, and now the ISP's want to screw them for no other reason than they have the money to influence congress.

Maybe it is true that you get into bed with hornets you should expect to get stung.  But who isn't in bed with government today?  Bankers?  Doctors?  Educators?  Realtors who depend on FHA and VA?  We are all corrupt.

Bottom line: I support net neutrality as it stands but oppose bringing ISP's under the auspices of public utilities.
 

[massadvj]

There is one last thing I want to point out here.  If anyone would actually support doing away with net neutrality, it would be the Democrats.  Their party has been bought and paid for by Comcast, which own MSNBC and all of the other former NBC properties.  Therefore, this whole thing is nothing but a big OPapaDoc head fake.

[Luis Gonzalez]

As was the right for illegal immigrant children who resided in foreign countries not bordering on the United States to be granted automatic asylum for reasons such as trying to avoid being victims of the sex-slave trade...or fear of life because of dangerous gangs.

Obama expanded that through Executive Order to include relatives of said children.

See how this Administration government works?

Fixed it for you.

[DCPatriot]

Fixed it for you.

Good point, Luis.  I get it.

But the primary debate point was to point out why Obama, who's resurrecting "Net Neutrality" cannot be trusted to do the right thing for the American people.