Battle for the Future of the Internet

illram said:

Using the Sherman Act to bust up Comcast or Time Warner or any of these mega-corporations would be great. I'm sure the Trump DoJ will get right on that.

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Andrew Thompson said:

1. Title II will very easily send already high internet prices skyrocketing with decreased levels of service. In addition to giving the FCC the power to demand that ISPs wire every house in America, Title II also gives the FCC the ability to set costs for internet usage removing potential marketplace competition and then sets ISP lobbyists up to campaign for higher internet costs.
2. In increases the Federal Government’s ability to spy on U.S. citizens. As originally leaked by Edward Snowden, the Fed has been working on building a global infrastructure, capable of spying on any citizen and accessing their personal information, since the Bush administration. Title II regulation give the Fed infinitely more control to pressure the corporation of ISPs in allowing them access to whatever they want. A parallel situation has already played out in the case of now-defunct secure email service Lavabit.
3. The threat to Internet freedom is NOT ISPs, it is the Federal Government. AT&T and other major US carriers have frequently said they support actual net neutrality, and they rightly should. If ISPs started regulating what information could go to whom, and they prioritized their content over that of a competitor, then there would be MASS rebellion against them. To give a division of the Fed such a broad scope of power and cost regulation over ISPs would dramatically hurt building a more robust broadband US infrastructure while simultaneously further hampering marketplace competition.

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Andrew Thompson said:

There is only one problem – Title II regulations ARE NOT “NET NEUTRALITY”.
What is Net Neutrality?

All internet connected computers have a unique address so that they can communicate with each other. The communications/transmissions are set between computers and servers in what is called “packets”; when you visit Facebook.com, for example, your computer is downloading multiple packets that are then displayed as what ever images/posts/text/video Facebook transmits to you. Net Neutrality is a regulatory effort over how that traffic gets to you; so under Net Neutrality, your aunt’s family newsletter website is given the same priority as Amazon.com. Or even, The Gateway Pundit is given the same priority in transmission as the New York Times. Sounds pretty good so far, right? Well, let’s get into what Title II actually is/does…

What is Title II?

Title II is completely different than Net Neutrally, and is currently being conflated as such by the left. Currently, they are claiming that Title II IS guaranteeing Net Neutrality, and that if it is rolled back there are no protections or guarantees that Americans will be able to access the same set of information or web sites. What Title II actually is, is a convoluted set of rules that were originally applied in the 1930s as part of the Communications Act. Part of Title II, which again was originally developed when we had rotary phones, is that ISPs are subject to universal service requirements: people in rural areas are required to be provided access at the cost of the service provider, in the same sense that phone companies are required to wire all houses in America regardless of how far or inaccessible.


Summery of the biggest problems:

1. Title II will very easily send already high internet prices skyrocketing with decreased levels of service. In addition to giving the FCC the power to demand that ISPs wire every house in America, Title II also gives the FCC the ability to set costs for internet usage removing potential marketplace competition and then sets ISP lobbyists up to campaign for higher internet costs.
2. In increases the Federal Government’s ability to spy on U.S. citizens. As originally leaked by Edward Snowden, the Fed has been working on building a global infrastructure, capable of spying on any citizen and accessing their personal information, since the Bush administration. Title II regulation give the Fed infinitely more control to pressure the corporation of ISPs in allowing them access to whatever they want. A parallel situation has already played out in the case of now-defunct secure email service Lavabit.
3. The threat to Internet freedom is NOT ISPs, it is the Federal Government. AT&T and other major US carriers have frequently said they support actual net neutrality, and they rightly should. If ISPs started regulating what information could go to whom, and they prioritized their content over that of a competitor, then there would be MASS rebellion against them. To give a division of the Fed such a broad scope of power and cost regulation over ISPs would dramatically hurt building a more robust broadband US infrastructure while simultaneously further hampering marketplace competition.

Click to expand...

Andrew Thompson said:

There is only one problem – Title II regulations ARE NOT “NET NEUTRALITY”.
What is Net Neutrality?

All internet connected computers have a unique address so that they can communicate with each other. The communications/transmissions are set between computers and servers in what is called “packets”; when you visit Facebook.com, for example, your computer is downloading multiple packets that are then displayed as what ever images/posts/text/video Facebook transmits to you. Net Neutrality is a regulatory effort over how that traffic gets to you; so under Net Neutrality, your aunt’s family newsletter website is given the same priority as Amazon.com. Or even, The Gateway Pundit is given the same priority in transmission as the New York Times. Sounds pretty good so far, right? Well, let’s get into what Title II actually is/does…

What is Title II?

Title II is completely different than Net Neutrally, and is currently being conflated as such by the left. Currently, they are claiming that Title II IS guaranteeing Net Neutrality, and that if it is rolled back there are no protections or guarantees that Americans will be able to access the same set of information or web sites. What Title II actually is, is a convoluted set of rules that were originally applied in the 1930s as part of the Communications Act. Part of Title II, which again was originally developed when we had rotary phones, is that ISPs are subject to universal service requirements: people in rural areas are required to be provided access at the cost of the service provider, in the same sense that phone companies are required to wire all houses in America regardless of how far or inaccessible.


Summery of the biggest problems:

1. Title II will very easily send already high internet prices skyrocketing with decreased levels of service. In addition to giving the FCC the power to demand that ISPs wire every house in America, Title II also gives the FCC the ability to set costs for internet usage removing potential marketplace competition and then sets ISP lobbyists up to campaign for higher internet costs.
2. In increases the Federal Government’s ability to spy on U.S. citizens. As originally leaked by Edward Snowden, the Fed has been working on building a global infrastructure, capable of spying on any citizen and accessing their personal information, since the Bush administration. Title II regulation give the Fed infinitely more control to pressure the corporation of ISPs in allowing them access to whatever they want. A parallel situation has already played out in the case of now-defunct secure email service Lavabit.
3. The threat to Internet freedom is NOT ISPs, it is the Federal Government. AT&T and other major US carriers have frequently said they support actual net neutrality, and they rightly should. If ISPs started regulating what information could go to whom, and they prioritized their content over that of a competitor, then there would be MASS rebellion against them. To give a division of the Fed such a broad scope of power and cost regulation over ISPs would dramatically hurt building a more robust broadband US infrastructure while simultaneously further hampering marketplace competition.

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tetris42 said:

Draining the swamp!

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illram said:

I agree with all of that. The poster I was replying too seemed to be indicating we need less government regulation, i.e., we just need the magical free market to solve everything. But as for the google fiber example...



Comcast and AT&T have sued Google or used other tricks, such as denying access to utility poles via private consortiums, in almost every market Google tried to enter. So assuming they can enter--great, more competition. Google was big enough to win in some areas, such as Atlanta, but ultimately they gave up on expanding. The current state of affairs makes it very difficult for anyone other than a massive, hundred-billion dollar company to get into the ISP game--and even Google eventually gave up.

Also I'm not really sure that getting more ISP's involved is necessarily a good "organic" safeguard against the pitfalls of a non-net-neutrality world. Comcast could still take advantage of a completely unregulated market to limit your access to its content if you choose to use Google Fiber, for example, so how does Google operating in your area help you if you cannot watch or listen to media controlled by the vast Comcast/Universal media empire? Same deal for AT&T, Verizon, all these companies. Like HBO? Better buy Time Warner cable then (who owns HBO)! Uh oh, looks like you're using Google Fiber, sorry, enjoy your 320kbs buffering of Game of Thrones. These companies are not just ISP's, they hold vast swaths of media content licenses and in a "free market" could use that leverage to deny or limit that access unless you use their ISP.

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Killahurtz said:

letting the gubment get entrenched in the operation of the internet under any circumstance is inherently a bad idea...your "user tax" to follow ...haha...you asked for it , you got it , bend over

it isn't going to stop at " those heartless isp's"...the idiotic notion that everyone is entitled to internet service is the exact path that a gubment would be expected to take because the best way to generate a tax revenue is to tax something that everyone has. So's we can keep the social justice and all...but then hell I'm old and it is going to be a hell of a fun ride to watch Americans strangle themselves and with gubment control and cry out "but ,but ,but ..."

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wright_left said:

Net neutrality will, ironically, start down the path to a regulated net, because that is what government does! Always! Everytime!

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"As I said previously, the raw number is not as important as the substantive comments that are in the record,"...
Stanton asked, "shouldn't the number of consumers who feel they are detrimentally affected be a factor in a cost-benefit analysis of what you do?" Pai did not give a definitive yes-or-no answer...
he praised the "exceptionally important contribution to the debate" made by a group of 19 nonprofit municipal-broadband providers who oppose the current net neutrality rules. But Pai made no comment later on when 30 small ISPs urged him to preserve the rules.

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Killahurtz said:

"I don't get how current rules of net neutrality are interpreted as government control"

the FCC is now given control to regulate the internet as a utility...ergo ...like most utilities in your area there is only one source for the service...eventually that will be the case and the gubment will be issuing you your user tax...fun isn't it?

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A group of small Internet service providers yesterday urged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to preserve the FCC's net neutrality rules and the related classification of ISPs as common carriers.

"We have encountered no new additional barriers to investment or deployment as a result of the 2015 decision to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service and have long supported network neutrality as a core principle for the deployment of networks for the American public to access the Internet," the ISPs said in a letter to Pai that was organized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The current rules are necessary "to address the anticompetitive practices of the largest players in the market," but "the FCC’s current course threatens the viability of competitive entry and competitive viability," the companies wrote.

"As direct competitors to the biggest cable and telephone companies, we have reservations about any plan at the FCC that seeks to enhance their market power without any meaningful restraints on their ability to monopolize large swaths of the Internet," the companies said. Finally, the letter criticized the recent decision by Congress and President Trump to repeal the FCC's online privacy rules. The privacy repeal was supported by Pai.

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