That favors me, because I believe that's very important.
The opinion that no number should be illegal gets thrown out the windows when you talk about an image. This used to be as common at AOL email addresses 20 years ago.
I disagree. The impact of NN regulations on investment decisions by network providers is a key factor in the NN debate.
Market experiments show that broadband regulation substantially impacts network growth – negatively. To highlight a few that originated the NN regulatory process….
- In 2008, the FCC attempted to sanction Comcast for degrading certain peer-to-peer services used by its broadband subscribers, but the attempt was rebuffed by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
- Comcast claimed that it was managing its network to limit congestion and protect the great bulk of its customers from traffic generated by a few. The FCC saw the country's largest cable-system operator as blocking Web videos to stop its customers from cannibalizing the operator's video-on-demand revenues, but no evidence was presented to support this proposition. Managing a network to limit congestion, seeking to protect the majority of customers from traffic generated by a few, if true, would “preserve a free and open Internet,” not undermine it.
- AOL's business structure violated “end-to-end,” and it was criticized as a “walled garden” that stifled consumer choice, application innovation, and Internet development. But the end of integrated ISPs, not only AOL but CompuServe, Prodigy, @Home, and many others, came from unregulated competitive forces as efficiencies rendered by the integrated ISP faded.
- The mobile marketplace disrupted fixed-network dominance, revolutionized economies in the developing world, and brought an array of lifestyle changes that brought enormous improvements in industrial efficiency, public safety, social networking, and health services.
- Traditionally, mobile devices have been tightly tied to a particular mobile network, and customers had to purchase the handset that was associated with the network, and vice versa. Mobile carriers exercised a fair degree of vertical integration, maintaining broad control over the devices and applications that accessed their systems. New "gardens" both walled and unfenced have recently upended the traditional "walled gardens," and killer wireless applications arose from handset innovations and the platforms organized around them.
NN regulations may suppress anticompetitive conduct, but may also slow infrastructure growth and alter capital flows.
[1] The Fallacy of Net Neutrality
Many, and arguably the vast majority, of political issues are built upon extremes of hyperbole. Support this, or oppose this, or the world will end - or something not far from it. And so when some meaningful change does occur on any such topic, and the hyperbole does not play out, the issue tends to more or less die. The ending of net neutrality was supposed to create something like a borderline unusable internet. In reality once it did end [1] and had more or less no impact, the hyperbole obviously proved unjustified. I feel obligated to cite my statement that it ended since I find many don't even realize the US no longer has any notion of net neutrality.
IMO net neutrality is inherently and obviously desirable. So I think the moral of the story is more to focus on realistic outcomes, consequences, and justifications for issues. Appealing to hyperbole is a great way to emphasize and grow your cause in the short-run, but absolutely destroy it in the long-run. It feels analogous to how MBAs run companies: optimizing for next quarter, in exchange for long-term implosion.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_by_country#Unit...