throwaway23497

Net Neutrality has literally nothing to do with this. Stop with the concept creep already.

Sorry, I don't remember this magical time pre-2005 where there were line-sharing requirements on cable networks and I could get more than one cable provider over the same line.

>which operated over phone lines... which meant they were covered by Title II.

Do you have a source on this??

I've seen this claim made a few times in this thread and have been unable to find anything to back it up. I was under the impression that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 dictated that all ISP's were information services and exempted them from common-carrier and the like.

The phone services themselves were of course under title II but I've not found anything that indicates the ISP's that created a network on top of the phone network were.

I readily acknowledge I'm attacking your metaphor and not your argument here, but I'm curious about your perspective because I don't understand it.

You really think that if the government decided to stop regulating car safety tomorrow that car manufactures would STOP putting seatbelts and safety features in cars?

You realize that seatbelts were invented by the industry right? You know all those cool new driver assist saftey features that are poping up in cars? Those don't exist because they were regulated into existence. They are there because the market wants them people want them and will pay money for them so the industry is responding to it.

Regulations are for addressing tragedies of the commons, externalities, and market failures. Your smoking metaphor is a GOOD example because there are externalities that can't be addressed by the market. But this belief that companies whole purpose isn't to give it's customers what they want (yes so they can make a profit) is bonkers to me.

Now if you want to talk about how a lot of ISP's have a quasi-monopoly, then hell yes let's have that discussion. I'm right there with you, and those companies have done a lot to try and prevent creative solutions to the last mile problem(municipal fiber). Those are the sorts of things the FCC should be working to straiten out.

It doesn't follow that because there haven't been any large trust-busting actions since 1980's that the laws don't still cover the behavior.

But he's making the same argument that you say he was making on his podcast. Regulation has a cost.

The article literally states: "To believe that Chairman Pai is right is not to be against net neutrality; rather, it is to believe that the FCC’s 2015 approach was mistaken."

The FCC doesn't have the authority to regulate ISP's as the law is written. To get around this in 2015 they "reclassified" ISP's from information services to telecommunications services. This allowed them expansive authority over ISP's. It also applies a bunch of archaic rules that were meant for ma-bell and in no way apply to modern internet services.

If network neutrality is important to you then call your congressmen and tell them to pass a law that actually codifies it.

If you think your ISP is being a bad actor, then send a report to the FTC. You know the agency that's tasked with preventing and punishing anti-competitive behavior....