Re:One Step Closer to a Closed Internet
by thomastjeffery on Friday May 19, 2017 @01:06AM
(#14373155)
> a relatively fixed legal expense and therefore a barrier to entry.
No startup with any sense will actually do anything against these rules, so it is clearly not an expense or a barrier to entry. That is something that is relatively unique about net neutrality (and the former privacy protections) as a regulation in general. An ISP that does nothing to abuse its users will never have a burden here. It's a pothole in a road to nowhere.
> Can you expand on why you think federal-level regulation is necessary, particularly when compared with only state regulation?
An ISP's network is very unlikely to be constrained to one state. If a state enacted net-neutrality, the ISP would still be able to have preferred traffic in other states. To make matters worse, the customer's traffic is not the only end that must be protected, since the server needs the same amount of bandwidth. In order for a state's net-neutrality law to be effective, it would need to apply in every state where a server is running that the (in-state) customer wants to connect to. Naturally, a state cannot do that.
> but I also believe that those will be provided to consumers naturally through a competitive ISP market.
The sad fact is that there is no competitive market. The other sad fact is that most customers do not understand or care enough to push free market actors to provide these protections.
> there's a ReasonTV interview[1] with him that's actually pretty informative on what his true positions are
I've heard it. It takes a very minimal amount of thought to debunk his claims.
From the interview:
> My hope is that in a more free market light-touch environment, we can figure out what the right regulatory framework is to preserve those core protections of a free and open internet.
It is abundantly clear that the rules that are in place are exactly that.
> "What would an ISP be able to do that they cannot do with net-neutrality?" Pai: "Nothing."
That is simply not true. There is abundant evidence that before Title II regulations were in place, ISPs were beginning to offer services with preferred traffic, etc.
> These were all phantoms conjured up by people who wanted [net-neutrality] for political reasons.
Like what? Clearly the real "phantoms" being "conjured up" are your own, Pai.
I didn't bother to comment on the rest of the interview.
Suffice it to say: Interviews like this are an opportunity for Ajit Pai to avoid any actual argument with net-neutrality, and even redefine arguments against net-neutrality in order to make them easier to defeat. It might be insightful to hear Ajit Pai actually discuss this topic with a net-neutrality advocate, so that real discussion is not tossed aside, but that almost certainly will not happen.
No startup with any sense will actually do anything against these rules, so it is clearly not an expense or a barrier to entry. That is something that is relatively unique about net neutrality (and the former privacy protections) as a regulation in general. An ISP that does nothing to abuse its users will never have a burden here. It's a pothole in a road to nowhere.
> Can you expand on why you think federal-level regulation is necessary, particularly when compared with only state regulation?
An ISP's network is very unlikely to be constrained to one state. If a state enacted net-neutrality, the ISP would still be able to have preferred traffic in other states. To make matters worse, the customer's traffic is not the only end that must be protected, since the server needs the same amount of bandwidth. In order for a state's net-neutrality law to be effective, it would need to apply in every state where a server is running that the (in-state) customer wants to connect to. Naturally, a state cannot do that.
> but I also believe that those will be provided to consumers naturally through a competitive ISP market.
The sad fact is that there is no competitive market. The other sad fact is that most customers do not understand or care enough to push free market actors to provide these protections.
> there's a ReasonTV interview[1] with him that's actually pretty informative on what his true positions are
I've heard it. It takes a very minimal amount of thought to debunk his claims.
From the interview:
> My hope is that in a more free market light-touch environment, we can figure out what the right regulatory framework is to preserve those core protections of a free and open internet.
It is abundantly clear that the rules that are in place are exactly that.
> "What would an ISP be able to do that they cannot do with net-neutrality?" Pai: "Nothing."
That is simply not true. There is abundant evidence that before Title II regulations were in place, ISPs were beginning to offer services with preferred traffic, etc.
> These were all phantoms conjured up by people who wanted [net-neutrality] for political reasons.
Like what? Clearly the real "phantoms" being "conjured up" are your own, Pai.
I didn't bother to comment on the rest of the interview.
Suffice it to say: Interviews like this are an opportunity for Ajit Pai to avoid any actual argument with net-neutrality, and even redefine arguments against net-neutrality in order to make them easier to defeat. It might be insightful to hear Ajit Pai actually discuss this topic with a net-neutrality advocate, so that real discussion is not tossed aside, but that almost certainly will not happen.