Net Neutrality is a lie -- FCC cheats consumers with new rule

[Michael]

The debate over Net Neutrality took a very bizarre turn today when the Federal Communications Commission issued a ruling that prevents American Internet service providers from protecting the majority of their customers' Internet access from the abuses of a small number of users who, in many cases, are illegally uploading and downloading large files.

The FCC ruling cheats consumers because it strips carriers of the ability to monitor and police their networks, thus thwarting bandwidth hogs whose activity deteriorates the quality of these services for all consumers.

What's worse, the whole pro-Net Neutrality argument has been based on lies propagated by companies like Google and Amazon (pro-Net Neutrality voices) who do not want to pay for the infrastructure that would carry future high-bandwidth applications they want to develop.

Most of us would not use these applications from our homes.

Hence, the carriers now have to look at increasing their infrastructure to accommodate both legal and illegal high volume Internet use -- and they cannot charge the companies providing the applications and content that encourages that high volume use for the infrastructure those companies are using to enrich themselves.

This rule by the FCC is one of the most consumer-unfriendly moves the United States government has taken in a long, long time.

A few Republicans hope to defeat the FCC rule through legislation and it is incumbent upon us all as consumers to urge our Democratic Senators and Congressional Representatives to oppose the FCC ruling.

We don't need to be paying higher access fees in the future just so a minority of Internet users can enjoy faster access -- much less so that large, already profitable corporations can become even more profitable without having to bear up normal capital expenditures.

[Boomstick]

Well, it's a little early to get all up in arms about it. The proposed move by the FCC hasn't been put into effect yet, and likely won't for a long time, if it gets passed at all.

I should note that part of this proposal prevents internet service providers from slowing down or blocking access to sites that offer business or services that competes with their own, something Comcast has allegedly been guilty of lately.

[Michael]

Originally Posted by Boomstick

Well, it's a little early to get all up in arms about it. The proposed move by the FCC hasn't been put into effect yet, and likely won't for a long time, if it gets passed at all.

And if we're lucky, the FCC will get its wings clipped.

I should note that part of this proposal prevents internet service providers from slowing down or blocking access to sites that offer business or services that competes with their own, something Comcast has allegedly been guilty of lately.

What it does is prevent the ISPs from monitoring and managing the quality of the service they provide to the bulk of their customers.

The Federal Communications Commission doesn't need to put the rest of us in the position of subsidizing the bandwidth for people who want to hog the Internet for themselves.

Net Neutrality has never been about making Internet access fair for everyone -- it has always been about shifting the burden of costs from the heaviest users to the consumer market.

Do you really want to pay for infrastructure upgrades you won't even be able to use? That's what is at stake here.

[Boomstick]

Originally Posted by Michael

And if we're lucky, the FCC will get its wings clipped.

And they may well. If the FCC loses the lawsuit that Comcast has leveled at them, they likely won't have a leg to stand on in this matter.

Do you really want to pay for infrastructure upgrades you won't even be able to use? That's what is at stake here.

I should learn about it more. I really can't argue the nitty gritty of it with you, but I have a hard time believing that if these rulings were implemented there'd be widespread change. Just because consumers rights are expanded doesn't mean every consumer is going to take full advantage of them. Many of them probably won't even be aware there was a change, as far as PC internet use goes.

Now, for mobile applications, that's probably another matter.

Regardless, these telecom companies need to be taken down a few notches, and I take spiteful delight in anything that makes them squirm. Comcast, for one, is outrageous, how the government hasn't cracked down on them yet is amazing to me.

[Michael]

The telecoms will propose all sorts of counteractions if they have to live with the proposed rules. The bandwidth throttling they engaged in really did not threaten many people's Internet service quality (quite the contrary, they were protecting most of us from suffering a decline in quality).

Gamers who insist they should get all the bandwidth because they paid for it are conveniently neglecting to look at the fine print in the terms of service they agreed to.

But it's really (in my opinion) the illegal file sharing that has led to this particular phase of the struggle. In fact, some people are so determined to upload files illegally they go out of their ways to use other people's broadband services to do so.

This is not about the quality of gameplay -- it's about how well consumers can trust their service providers to manage network resources, and frankly having the government call the shots just doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

[shadowfax]

Originally Posted by Michael

We don't need to be paying higher access fees in the future just so a minority of Internet users can enjoy faster access -- much less so that large, already profitable corporations can become even more profitable without having to bear up normal capital expenditures.

I don't quite follow how those who hog bandwidth (which I suppose is a euphemism for illegal file sharing) can be called big corporations. On the contrary, I should imagine that the big corporations would like to blast these users out of the water if they had the chance. So isn't the decison you describe anti-corporation rather than pro-corporation?

[Alvin Eriol]

IIRC the impetus for such popular demand for "net neutrality" as there has been, originated from some ill-advised hyperbolic marketing on the part of ISP's.

In the mid '90's when there were still a great many independent ISP's (AOL & Earthlink hadn't bought'em all) & traffic consisted of text emails & straight-HTML web pages over telecom lines, they could all get away with advertising "unlimited" online time & bandwidth. Even relatively recently I hear complaints re how 1 or another ISP is scamming subscribers with "secret" throttling or unwritten bandwidth limits.

The moral: If you cannot or don't intend to provide truly unlimited bandwidth for a flat fee, don't imply unlimited bandwidth in your advertising. Service providers tend to get held to implied contracts offered in advertising in spite of "fine print" no one sees until they've already invested much time & effort into signing up with a service.

I think my own biggest "demand" for bandwidth, as I don't play online realtime games, watch online movies exc the occasional Youtube type vid, or fileshare, are the 10,000 frames per page of animated ads, ad video clips, & pop-ups shoved into my system by news sites with every page of content. I wonder what a legal bandwidth throttling process would do to the advertising business model of this kind of site, as they seem to demand more & more bandwidth & user machine resources just to maintain a level of usability. I wouldn't mind the opportunity in some cases to subscribe to an ad-free version of some sites, that would load & display simple readable content w/o bogging my machine & connection completely down with annoying jumping flashing dancing get-in-the-way ads.

[Michael]

Originally Posted by shadowfax

I don't quite follow how those who hog bandwidth (which I suppose is a euphemism for illegal file sharing) can be called big corporations. On the contrary, I should imagine that the big corporations would like to blast these users out of the water if they had the chance. So isn't the decison you describe anti-corporation rather than pro-corporation?

There are two levels of conflict in this matter:

Large Corporate Interests (e.g. Google, Amazon) vs. Telecoms
These corporate interests want the telecoms to build out our current infrastructure to handle applications that have not yet been developed. In a normal business environment the application developers would be asked to bear the cost, or at least a part of it, of building out the infrastructure.

Instead, the large corporate interests are insisting that the telecoms build the infrastructure first, billing the costs out to their current customers (most of whom would not be able to use the planned applications anyway, since they are supposed to be Enterprise-class applications intended for business use).

Large residential bandwidth users who often engage in extensive illegal file sharing and download (streaming movies, etc.) vs. the Telecoms
These bandwidth hogs don't want to pay fees proportionate to their use of the existing infrastructure even though their (often) illegal activites deteriorate the quality of service for the rest of the residential customers (who will have to bear up the cost of building out infrastructure to satisfy the demands of the bandwidth hogs).

You see, in either scenario, most people would pay for infrastructure they won't use. Hence, there is nothing neutral about Net Neutrality.

It's really Net Favoritism and is about as consumer-unfriendly as you can get.

It's equivalent to charging every customer who buys a budget sedan to pay a portion of the purchase price for all Mazeratis that are sold. The old "don't advertise unlimited bandwidth" argument doesn't even hold up. None of the ISPs have made any such promises. (For example, Comcast's TOS as of December 2007 makes no such promise.) Going back to 2000, SWBell made no such promises.

[shadowfax]

Originally Posted by Michael

Large residential bandwidth users who often engage in extensive illegal file sharing and download (streaming movies, etc.) vs. the Telecoms
These bandwidth hogs don't want to pay fees proportionate to their use of the existing infrastructure even though their (often) illegal activites deteriorate the quality of service for the rest of the residential customers (who will have to bear up the cost of building out infrastructure to satisfy the demands of the bandwidth hogs).

Apart from the illegal type of download, I am under the impression that the major crporations are very much in favor of applications that involve a lot of downloading. For example both Microsoft and Apple are promoting TV-on-demand style services where you can (or will be able to) download your movie or show and watch it when you want rather than when the program scheduler wants. Right now this probably constitutes only a small part of the overall TV market but this could change quite rapidly and I believe that if you look back on this in say 5 or 10 years time I'd be very surprised if there hadn't been a reversal of the situation with conventional-style TV with fixed schedules and little user choice to be a minority phenomenon and possibly on its way out altogether - except maybe for live coverage of such mass events as sports or maybe a presidential inauguration.

So far, I haven't really seen anybody in the industry speak out against TV-on-demand so I assume it's something they either all want or are, at best, indifferent about.

Are the telecoms the victims here? The poor guys who are going to have to pay for the infastructure without getting fair returns? Maybe? Maybe not? So far, the telecoms have been quite enthusiastic about new technologies and promoting these - something they wouldn't be doing if they weren't getting something out of them. Furthermore, I can imagine that with a convergence of interests between the TV content providers and the telecoms, there will be a series of takeover or joint ventures over time which will basically put an end to any disputes over the sharing of risks and profits.

[Michael]

The only victims would be consumers who have to pay for infrastructure upgrades they don't use.

People should pay for what they use, not subsidize other people's (or corporations') costs.

Net Neutrality has really become twisted and distorted by distractions. A company as profitable as Google has no business insisting that Telecoms pick up all the costs of developing new infrastructure -- because ultimately we as the Telecoms' other customers would have to pay for those costs.

[Alvin Eriol]

Another development that may interest all following this issue:

Study says Net Neutrality won't increase jobs.

[Michael]

That might explain why Google is suddenly telling the world that the U.S. needs more broadband coverage.

They'll increase their advertising revenues with increased broadband (Google nows owns Doubleclick, the largest media service on the Web).

[inked]

See here for a discussion of the court ruling:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...30118895.shtml


What's your take, Michael?

[Michael]

Very ironic that Google was trying to have it both ways. Of course, the issue is far from settled. The FCC still has options, including asking Congress to give it the authority that the court says it lacks.

The RIAA should be pleased to see that ISPs are legally free to fight file sharing. This ruling is more a victory for them than for anyone else.