July 12

[Liza Kholodkova]

Hey everyone,

The FCC  Chairman Pai wants to repeal Title 2, which would allow ISPs to censor  internet. Comcast, Verizon and AT&T want to end net neutrality so they can charge extra fees to control what we see and do online.

Please send a letter to FCC and call your representatives.
https://www.battleforthenet.com/

"Cable companies are famous for high prices and poor service. Several rank as the most hated companies in America. Now, they're lobbying the FCC and Congress to end net neutrality. Why? It's simple: if they win the power to slow sites down, they can bully any site into paying millions to escape the "slow lane." This would amount to a tax on every sector of the American economy. Every site would cost more, since they'd all have to pay big cable. Worse, it would extinguish the startups and independent voices who can't afford to pay. If we lose net neutrality, the Internet will never be the same."

The most worrisome about this is the cable companies can exchange donations and favors with our representatives in exchange for slowing down information/websites of the political opposition.

If you live in Gville:
Rep. Ted Yoho (Republican) - 202-225-5744
Rep. Al Lawson (Democrat) - 202-225-0123
Sen. Bill Nelson (Democrat) - 202-224-5274
Sen. Marco Rubio (Republican) - 202-224-3041

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Sincerely,

Liza Kholodkova

[Brian Bartholomew]

Here are some articles about net "neutrality", it started as a subsidy for netflix.
Note the dates on the articles, two were written the first time around.

https://mises.org/library/net-neutrality-scam

https://mises.org/blog/ditch-net-neutrality-now

https://www.wired.com/2014/06/net_neutrality_missing/

Brian

[Liza Kholodkova]

The first two sources are from an extremely libertarian organization with questionable believes and weird theories. Their whole argument is always "gov is bad", but not actually providing solutions or actionable steps to take.

The last article talks about how having ISPs be monopolies is bad. Yeah but there is no legislation coming that will split monopolies or create more competition.

So going forward, ISP are monopolies and we should not deregulate them by repealing title 2.

Break apart the monopolies, introduce completion then repeal regulation. NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

Breaking up a monopoly this big is extremely hard. I don't even know how the gov would go about it. So you know lets not get ride of regulation while the monopoly is still going strong.
 

We are not talking about customers paying for speed: we already pick our plans based on speed and data caps.
We are talking about ISPs choosing what content/websites customers can view online.

 

Can someone explain to me how repealing title 2 will create more competition or lower barriers to market entry? Or how to break monopolies who engage in extreme tactics against cities that try to introduce competition (no, dropping all regulation will not magically dissolve these giant monopolies).

Brian

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Sincerely,

Liza Kholodkova

Founder of Botsy BeDrawn
Gainesville Hackerspace President

Aerospace and Mechanical Engineer

[Brian Bartholomew]

A monopoly is when a legislature picks a vendor to provide a product
or service, and declares it illegal for anyone else to compete with
them. In Gainesville, cell phone towers, wired telephone, Internet
over wired telephone, cable television, and Internet over cable
television are all monopolies. Most of these have been made
monopolies by the national legislature, with the FCC as the regulator.

Microsoft and Google are large and have many customers, but are not
monopolies. Congress has not passed a law saying only Microsoft can
write word processors or only Google can search the Internet.

> Breaking up a monopoly this big is extremely hard. I don't even know
> how the gov would go about it.

The way to make the "last mile" of data service wires to consumers not
a monopoly is for congress to repeal their laws making it so. This
could be a one-page law saying 'laws so-and-so are repealed'. Then,
other vendors would be free to compete, which today they are not.

> The first two sources are from an extremely libertarian organization
> with questionable believes and weird theories. Their whole argument
> is always "gov is bad", but not actually providing solutions or
> actionable steps to take.

The second article, titled "Ditch Net Neutrality Now", offered a step
to take, which is to ditch net neutrality now. You believe this is
realistic to occur because your first mail warned it may happen.

Brian

[Brian Bartholomew]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Regulatory capture is a form of government failure that occurs
when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public
interest, instead advances the commercial or political
concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry
or sector it is charged with regulating. When regulatory
capture occurs, the interests of firms or political groups are
prioritized over the interests of the public, leading to a net
loss to society as a whole. Government agencies suffering
regulatory capture are called "captured agencies".

Net Neutrality is an example of Regulatory Capture. Netflix got the
regulator, the FCC, to make other Internet users pay to build out
infrastructure which mostly only Netflix wanted.

> We are talking about ISPs choosing what content/websites customers
> can view online.

And then dictating those choices to all users using the captured
regulator.

> Can someone explain to me how repealing title 2 will create more
> competition or lower barriers to market entry?

Repealing Net Neutrality reduces the power of the captured regulator
to dictate terms, which increases competition.

A book from the Harvard Business School which I recommend to make
sense of all this is:

_Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy_
by Carl Shapiro, Hal R. Varian

https://www.amazon.com/Information-Rules-Strategic-Network-Economy/dp/087584863X

Brian

[Brian Bartholomew]

> We are talking about ISPs choosing what content/websites customers
> can view online.

| And then dictating those choices to all users using the captured
| regulator.

Exactly as the FCC does not allow anyone to speak profanity on
television or radio. Comedian George Carlin built a career on that
with his bit "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television". If the
power of censorship was taken away from the regulator, you would be
free to watch a competing station which wasn't so uptight. Because
Congress created a monopoly, you cannot. Likewise, the FAA will not
permit airlines which allow smoking, or skipping the TSA. The
automobile crash safety standards will not permit 50 MPG cars like we
had in the 1980's. etc.

> Break apart the monopolies, introduce completion then repeal
> regulation. NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

The way reform works is for the competition to appear first, and help
avoid or evade the regulated monopoly. For example, Uber helps evade
taxicab medallions (licenses). Airbnb helps evade hotel licenses,
zoning, and taxes. Home Depot helps evade building permits. The
solar power magazine "Home Power" used to have a "Guerrilla Solar"
page, with a homeowner pictured on his roof wearing a bandana and
sunglasses, having illegally flipped the "sell" switch on his inverter.

> but there is no legislation coming that will split monopolies or
> create more competition.

The primary tool a legislature has is to reduce competition by
creating monopolies and reducing allowed variety. As competition and
variety is the main source of reform, it is difficult to do good with
a legislature.

Brian

[Randy Fischer]

I'm not going to argue with Brian, he's a very committed libertarian, and I have a a lot of sympathy with his point of view.

But Brian's arguments can be very back-to-front, assuming as premises the results he desires.

Others might care to hear my arguments, though.  The issues are very nuanced.

First of all:

> Here are some articles about net "neutrality", it started as a subsidy for netflix.
> Note the dates on the articles, two were written the first time around.

There are several problems with the above statement: first of all, Netflix as a content provider already pays for bandwidth - via transit networks, akamized drops, peering agreements including specialized caching servers at IPX/s, and of course, amazon's services (the bandwidth costs of this latter have been dropping, BTW - so that all seems pretty good to me, capitalism working, check).

Then there's the eyeball networks (verizon, at&t, etc),  for whose customers are paying to receive the data.

So: the eyeball networks are already making money at both ends.  And yet, SBC Communications chairman Whitacre had the gall to say:

> Asked about Internet firms such as Google, Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and online phone service Vonage, Whitacre told Business Week that those companies were dependent on SBC's lines -- or "pipes" -- for their success in reaching consumers.

> "Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using," he said, according to Business Week Online's edited excerpts of the interview.

This was waaaay back in 2005.  Everyone in the know saw this for what it was, a shakedown, pure and simple. As I've said above, the parties at both ends of those pipes were already paying what the market would bear.  Don't take my word for it, go check the North American Operations Group (nanog)'s mailing list archives. These are the guys that make the internet happen, and you can and should subscribe and follow the focused and informed conversations.  And lots of technical goodness too.

As far as the role of Government, let's look at the sins and wins of the FCC.  Spectrum, for instance, is a public good and belongs to the citizens. My Civics 101 classes back in '73 taught that Government assumes management for fair allocation of our public resources.

Here's the allocation map for the spectrum as it was divided up as of 2011:  Spectrum Wall Chart. Amazing.

Of course, there's always the problem of central planning being too conservative, and Government functionaries are often resistant to change. Yet, in this case it's worked pretty well - consider the case of Ligando nee LightSquared networks who's change of technologies would have degraded existing GPS receivers.  The FCC had our backs. And right now the FCC is being politicised by a duplicitous coalition of far-right anti-government politicians and their crony-monopolists. 

This email has already gone on too long. I'll just say that Brian glosses over natural monopolies, and completely ignores Government anti-trust protections (which is the real endgame for verizon, at&t and their ilk).  In the US, the fashion in the Judiciary is that allowing huge mergers can reduce consumer costs (see Judges Posner and Bork's writings on this).  And that's true, but as Brian rightly points out, that kind of lock-in reduces the creation of new markets, new technologies, and new entrepreneurs. 

The Europeans, however, use Government power to keep corporations from acquiring too much power.

So maybe Brian and I agree after all: we need more Socialism.

-Randy

[Scott Preston]

One of the arguments is the FCC verses the FTC for regulating the "Internet."  This is being used in some cases, right or wrong, as reason to get rid of FCC Net Neutrality.  This is at best an argument between government entities trying to grab power (and in the end money or resources).

Moving away from that toward the bigger discussion of what are the issues that could kill the "Internet."\

A fragmented structure where each fiefdom between you and the servers or services squeezes everyone for a "tax."  Amazon (or Netflix, AWS, Google, Microsoft, Bing, Twilio, Dropbox, etc. etc.) has to pay their provider(s) at locations for their last (first) mile.   Then there are a few people that squeeze them to haul their data over the major distances.  

Then you get down to the customer end of the data delivery.  Cable or phone companies charge their customers as much as possible for a base "pipe" size.  The company has a large number of customers and they squeeze Netflix to stay on the "fast lane" to your base pipe, even if you are using 10% of your capacity.  Netflix starts to use a good bit of your (the customers) pipe and they decide it is important to you.  They decide to have a "surcharge" for this heavy data usage, maybe only during peak times, and you have to pay to keep them flowing quickly to your house (site).  Or they package a group of sites for fast bandwidth: Netflix, ESPN, ABC, Disney.  So to get fast Netflix you must get those other things too, just like TV channels are packaged- several things you do not care about to get one or two you want.

Your provider has their own media companies so they put competitors competing products into a slower lane.  Cox Video On_Demand streams FAST but Netflix, a competitor in video delivery, has some intermittent performance issues and their service is seen as having "not enough power or bandwidth."

Companies can kill smaller competitors with combinations of bundling, preferential data delivery, etc.  Are companies required to deliver data from my upstart that is providing some service?  Can they block it at their discretion?  Or with some process or reason?   What is the basis for blocking my service or data?  Is there anything other than every single court in the country to argue these things?

Can my provider monitor my traffic and DNS queries and then "monetize" that data to sell my information or ads they insert into my data stream as it passes them? Are they allowed to inspect that traffic and insert ads into the stream from forbes.com?

Can the local provider share unlimited information about me to make money?  My web traffic?  How about this list:

 1.    Name and address

 2.    Electronic mail address
 3.    Age or date of birth
 4.    Number of children
 5.    The age or gender of children
 6.    Race
 7.    Occupation
 8.    Telephone number
 9.    Education
 10.   The kind of automobile product the customer purchased, leased, or rented
 11.   Real property purchased, leased, or rented
 12.   The kind of service provided
 13.   Payment history
 14.   Information pertaining to the customer’s creditworthiness, assets, income, or liabilities

Does my purchasing a data pipe, or TV services, from a company give them the rights to have or share all of this?

I think net neutrality and some rules are required to keep the unbridled free market model from exploiting and killing things to benefit their bottom line exclusively.

By the way- the list above is from Cox provided based on a privacy query.   Full text below:

Cox’s policy is to not disclose Personally Identifiable Information to persons outside of Cox, other than our affiliates, vendors and business partners, without your prior consent or as otherwise specified in our privacy statement.  We sometimes use affiliates, vendors or partners in providing services to you and may share Personally Identifiable Information for these purposes. We require these parties to maintain at least the same level of confidentiality we maintain ourselves. We also prohibit them from using Personally Identifiable Information for any purpose other than providing the services.  For more information please visit Customer Privacy Notice.

>

> In the normal course of business, we may share with our Cox Affiliates for their direct marketing efforts the types of information on the list below.  In this context, Cox Affiliates are other Cox entities within Cox Communications, Inc.   Please note that the categories below are the types of customer information we may share, but not all categories apply to all customers, and we do not share this information with any unaffiliated third parties.

> 1.    Name and address

> 2.    Electronic mail address

> 3.    Age or date of birth

> 4.    Number of children

> 5.    The age or gender of children

> 6.    Race

> 7.    Occupation

> 8.    Telephone number

> 9.    Education

> 10.   The kind of automobile product the customer purchased, leased, or rented

> 11.   Real property purchased, leased, or rented

> 12.   The kind of service provided

> 13.   Payment history

> 14.   Information pertaining to the customer’s creditworthiness, assets, income, or liabilities

>

> As a customer you may opt-out of receiving direct mail, email, phone, or fax marketing material from Cox.  If you would like to opt-out of receiving direct marketing material, please let us know what type of marketing material you desire not to receive and we will process your opt-out.  You may also opt-out of receiving video recommendations through accessing the settings menu on the set top box.

A big problem is many places only have one real provider for Internet services with reasonable performance.

As you can guess, I think net neutrality is important to the future of smaller startup entities and to control entities with HUGE POCKETS that can own everything (providers, paths, politicians, lawyers etc.) to make money regardless of the overall good.  

[Brian Bartholomew]

> A big problem is many places only have one real provider for
> Internet services with reasonable performance.

First, you made a choice: you want data services to be a regulated
monopoly administered by a public utility commission, the FCC. Then,
you list some drawbacks of your choice: the service offering which the
public utility commission has picked does not have the set of features
you desire. No competitor can offer combinations of privacy and
programming which you prefer, because that is illegal, due to your
choice of making it illegal. What you should conclude is, making data
services a regulated monopoly administered by a public utility
commission didn't produce the results you wanted. Consider other
approaches besides central planning.

It was legal to compete with the US Post Office until about 1850, when
Lysander Spooner proved Congress' postal service was no longer the
best option by delivering letters faster and cheaper. In response,
Congress told him to stop doing that or it would put him in prison.
When a legislature creates a monopoly, they do it after the
government-favored entry is proven inferior by competition.
Monopolies lock in losers, that's the point of legislating a monopoly.
If the government-favored entry was actually better, everyone would be
using it already, and the legislature wouldn't bother to pass a
monopoly law forcing people to use the inferior service at gunpoint.

> unbridled free market model

Does not exist in the US. Every entity you've named is a regulated
monopoly of some form or other. Telcos, ISPs and media content
companies, all of those corporations with far more than 50 employees,
each is mandated to comply with bookshelf-feet of laws implementing
central planning goals. There is no equivalent to the Linux community
in the data communications market segment, with thousands of
alternatives offering whatever they want, users switching to
competitors if they don't like it, and no police enforcement of
legislature-picked choices.

Brian