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And I guess the root of that issue is whether or not ISPs and underlying infrastructure are considered a public service company or just a regular for-profit concern.
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No problem with ISP making a profit.
I'd rather be phishing!
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Exactly; I'm a free market advocate, but I'm also an advocate that federal and state governments should provide infrastructure (roads being the most common example). That's not from an idealist perspective; I just don't see why we should have wasted resources of 3 or 4 lines going over the poles that are doing the same thing, just for different companies.
I think it's safe to say that internet connection has become part of the infrastructure of the US and other developed countries.
My $0.02: net neutrality is an important concept, and the barriers to entry for ISPs are way too high to encourage startup competition (not just capital investment, but also regulatory concerns), so I'm not convinced that the US version of the free market is adequate to address this dilemma. It sucks, but that's the reality we're in. I think at this point, while far from perfect, one solution would be service providers bidding on service areas, and those companies would have to meet certain standards (pricing, speed, uptime, etc.).
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Exactly my point, well put!
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Christopher Duncan wrote: (providing it doesn't break any laws)
It's simple then: make net neutrality the law.
Anyway, Net Neutrality sounds nice and all, but companies will use it as an excuse to double their prices. They're all like "what, actually provide full access to the internet? this is an outrage! I will get my revenge somehow".
That's what they did here, when Net Neutrality became the law. Well, some of them. Actually none of the dsl providers, as far as I know. The mobile ones sure did though, they were butt-mad that they had to allow WhatsApp (which obviously presents a serious threat to their way-overpriced SMS service) and prices went up.
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Don't get me wrong, I don't trust the average corporation further than I can throw an obese and mildly agitated warthog. That said, this is a slippery slope. Industry a suddenly gets governed by new laws that strip it of its property rights. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe it's not, but now we have industry A asking why every other industry isn't subjected to the same draconian practices, at which point people begin to wonder if or where it will end - should governments take over all businesses?
Mostly playing devil's advocate here, but "just make it the law" is the beginning of a dangerous game.
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Of course it is, but that game started a century ago (historians: feel free to provide a more accurate time), just look at the food industry, the drug industry, the adult industry, the alcohol industry, the amusement industry, the taxi industry, the financial industry, the telephone industry (which is of all of those examples the most closely related), holy crap this list never ends.
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My recollection of the 70s is that the drug industry was largely unregulated. No, wait. Nevermind. Turns out I don't remember the 70s after all. 
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Almost the entire mass media in the United States has been taken over by a few conservative owners who severely restrict what is allowed to be presented to the public in what manner. People who rely on mass media for information are screwed, and way too many of them do not even know it. The Internet is the only way we can have anything close to open and free public discourse in democratic society, and losing network neutrality would put an end to that.
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In most cases these "property rights" are monopolies granted by various levels of government. I live in an AT&T monopoly area. If I want internet access, I must buy it from AT&T. When it comes to internet access, most people simply want a fast connection to the internet, just like any other commodity. ISPs and the various backbone providers are effectively commodity providers and they don't like that. It costs them the same to send a byte from Point A to Point B whether that byte is part of an email, a video, a VOIP call, or an IM.
They want to use their monopoly power to make even more money. For example, several years ago the FCC had to smack down a small Telco/ISP because they were blocking all VOIP calls coming into their network unless they were going to a customer of their VOIP product. These companies will do all they can to protect their monopoly power. Just take a look at municipal Wi-Fi. When these monopoly companies were dragging their feet on providing municipal Wi-Fi, some cities got fed up with it and decided to build their own. These monopoly companies immediately went to the State government and in many cases, managed to get laws passed prohibiting cities from building their own Wi-Fi because, they claimed it was unfair competition. Imagine that, a monopoly complaining about unfair competition.
Edit: removed extra word.
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"now we have industry A asking why every other industry isn't subjected to the same draconian practices"
The phone companies are. The oil companies are. Gas companies are. Electric companies are. Water companies are. You can't ask why other industries aren't subject to practices when other industries ARE subject to these practices.
If phone companies are subjected to these "draconian practices", why aren't the other telecoms?
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It's all about separation of concerns if you allow me to use that metaphor.
Content suppliers shouldn't own the roads and thereby create an unhealthy monopoly.
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You're speaking, I believe, two two separate issues. An unhealthy monopoly is certainly a fair conversation to have in this context. Roads, however, are built and maintained (here in America) by tax dollars, not for-profit companies.
If we want to use our taxes for Internet infrastructure, that's also a fair conversation to have, but at present it's the private and public corporations who have invested time and money building this infrastructure, which is where I start wondering about the right to take control of someone's property.
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The same thing applies to telephone companies, which were eventually and rightly considered utilities. The Internet has become a necessary means of public communication, and the providers are frequently local monopolies. To give over control of information to private corporations is the second step to fascism. The first step has already been taken by the few owners of the mass media in the United States.
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You are forgetting that in most cases, these corporations have been given monopoly power by the government, guaranteeing them a profit. In return for this guarantee, they must accept some regulation by the government. It's not like another company can come along and put in their own infrastructure and compete with them.
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Net Neutrality is indeed a complex issue, and you are correct that the company's property is being used, and they have the right to charge for that. But the question is who do you charge?
Should your ISP be charging all the websites you surf to? In addition to you? I know that's an ad-absurdum argument, but it highlights the underlying issue. If my ISP wants more money because I'm filling their tubes with Netflix traffic, they should be charging ME more, not Netflix.
After saying all that though, I actually agree with the courts on this decision. The FCC was trying pussy-foot its way around the issue and court squashed them. Time for them to either man up and call ISPs common carriers or GTFO and let the market have free reign.
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As I mentioned, I haven't read up on the facts, but what you're saying was my gut feeling of what was going on. Not the court saying, "net neutrality bad, very bad" but rather them striking down a sloppy implementation of a law that was probably cobbled together by the FCC in a roomful of special interest groups.
That's one of the reasons I haven't been too worked up beyond philosophical curiosity. My feeling is that no one has as of yet made a serious effort to decide this issue one way or the other.
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Christopher Duncan wrote: striking down a sloppy implementation of a law that was probably cobbled together by the FCC in a roomful of special interest groups.
That's exactly correct.
Christopher Duncan wrote: no one has as of yet made a serious effort to decide this issue one way or the other.
The Verizons, AT&T's, and Comcast's are greasing plenty of palms to keep it this way, too. Unfortunately.
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I think you said the magic word with "monopoly." Certainly an extenuating circumstance.
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There would not be confidentiality in writing if you take the position that mail is owned by whomever owns the mailbox.
Christopher Duncan wrote: from a more pragmatic perspective it seems to me that the wires I get to use in order to interact with the Internet, at least in America, belong to companies.
They're not owned by the companies, regardless of those claims.
If each company had to run it's own wire into your house, you could claim that it's "theirs".
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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I have DSL so the wire actually does run right up to my house. Unless, you know, the deer have chewed it up again.
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Yes, it runs to your door but you don't have a cable per ISP.
If you can change ISP freely, without them having having to add new wiring, then the cable does not really belong to whatever ISP you are currently with. So they can't have 100% claim over it, and because of that, they should not be allowed to do just what they want with it.
If we have to start changing ISP to access some websites, that is going to be hell for us, even though we are already paying for the access.
And in any case, totally free market tend to go wrong in most cases, because of greed or whatever other human defects… So a certain level of regulation seems necessary. We just have to find how much regulation is reasonble, and how much starts to be too much like communism (or whatever opposite of free market you may think of)…
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As far as I can tell, the ruling is not a ruling on net neutrality per se but whether or not the net neutrality rules recently imposed are applicable to a company who is in the business of providing a computer tranmission network is not classified as common carrier according to the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
The problem was that the lawmakers of 1996 regarded the transmission of voice data to be deemed worthy of common carrier status and that the transmission of computer data as not worthy of common carrier status. This was incredibly shortsighted corrupt.
Seems like the solution would be to classify the companies that provide internet services as common carriers.
AmIright?
modified 15-Jan-14 14:11pm.
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