Filing Detail ID 1051157755251 Name of Filer Barack Obama Type of Filing COMMENT Filing Status DISSEMINATED Viewing Status Unrestricted Date Received May 11, 2017 Date Posted May 12, 2017 Address 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW City Washington State DC ZIP 20500 Zip4+ Brief Comment The unprecedented regulatory power the Obama Administration imposed on the internet is smothering innovation, damaging the American economy and obstructing job creation. I urge the Federal Communications Commission to end the bureaucratic regulatory overreach of the internet known as Title II and restore the bipartisan light-touch regulatory consensus that enabled the internet to flourish for more than 20 years. The plan currently under consideration at the FCC to repeal Obama's Title II power grab is a positive step forward and will help to promote a truly free and open internet for everyone. https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filing/1051157755251
To me, the issue is competition. Net neutrality would not be necessary if there was a truly competitive market. Too many people have just one provider, though that's not the issue here in Austin. Also, if people were not so dang obsessed with their internet lives, the telecom industries wouldn't have such control. People seem unable or unwilling to break with the internet, so these companies know they have a captive market. It used to be similar with cable, though you still had free public networks broadcasting over the air, but now people are cutting the cable cord and it's disrupting the market, businesses are making changes. If people were willing to do the same with internet, ie not buy a product they don't want, then the internet would fix itself (or remain data neutral). This the argument many opposing NN are making, and I agree with them. If there was a truly competitive market, if the public wanted net neutrality, they would get it. I just don't believe internet is an intrinsic right. If a company wants to offer new kinds of services, charging in a different way, they should have that right. If Verizon wants to partner with Netflix, so be it. If that means I either can't watch Netflix, or I have to choose between Verizon or an ISP with a slower Netflix connection, so be it, I, as a consumer, am capable of making such a decision for myself. Let's also not forget the involvement of municipal and state governments in this lack of competition issue either. Obtaining the right of way necessary to lay these lines is near impossible in many areas of the country. Barriers to entry into this market have only harmed consumers and stifled innovation, that much I absolutely agree with. I'm also confused as to how AGs are suing the FCC on this. Are they suing over the fake comments? Because how do you sue an agency for not regulating? If Congress wants to regulate the internet, it should pass legislation. Absent of that, I don't agree with using 80 year old statutes to create new industry regulations.
Again, getting rid of NN does absolutely nothing to help with these other issues. Yes, competition is an issue, and something that would really help that is ending restrictions on municipal internet in under-served areas. Removing rules against blocking and throttling does nothing to help this happen. And no, I don't believe internet is an "intrinsic right" either. It's a service that you have to pay for, just like a phone line. And like a phone line, internet is a utility in this day and age. It's gotten to the point where it's practically required for everyday life. Heck, I don't have a single bill I pay physically anymore. It's not really an optional service for a lot of people as you imply, and will only become more required as time goes on. You can argue it isn't, but that would seem a very weak argument to me. You could also technically survive without phone service, do everything by mail and in-person, and use public phones if-needed. But it's not a practical solution for everyday life in the modern world. But getting gutting NN would allow ISPs to, say, block Facebook unless you gave them an extra $5 month for the privilege. That would essentially be an ISP profiting off of Facebook's work, and any other site they decided to set up such a system for. I don't think that will realistically happen anytime soon, but it doesn't help consumers one bit to get rid of rules saying that's not even allowed. There's a reason neither Tom Wheeler's FCC, nor Ajit Pai's, or any FCC ever, could just instantly enact whatever rules they felt like. They are required to get the public's input through a comment period, and use that input to inform a decision which is "in the public interest." Wheeler's FCC went through the process and enacted rules the public overwhelmingly supported. By comparison, Pai went through the motions of a comment period, but did nothing to address that it was rife with fraud and identity theft, and didn't care that the public still overwhelmingly supported NN. He just kept repeating "well it's about quality, not quantity". He was also very slow to respond, or did not respond at all, to records requests from NN supporters. Many AGs will see this behavior as not really taking public comments / public interest into consideration at all... and those things will be at the root of any lawsuits that come about.
Yah, I don't entirely agree with this premise. It's often municipalities that are enacting additional burdens that restrict smaller ISP startups. Investments in new infrastructure have declined because what's the incentive to build new lines if you can't offer new services or you can't differentiate your service from any other? Again, I disagree (in part). By making it a public utility and regulating it as such, it has essentially become a right, as has access to phone lines and now the internet. Just because an invention is extremely useful and beneficial, does not mean it should then be treated as a necessity. Furthermore, these companies main objection to net neutrality is services that require large amounts of bandwidth and perhaps, down the line, popular social media sites. Do you think the government needs to regulate companies to ensure that we all have the ability to Facebook for the same cost? Which we don't already, as there are different internet speeds and costs currently. You know what would happen if companies tried to get you to pay $5 a month to use Facebook? A ton of people would stop using Fbook. Many would say, oh hell it's $5, but many more, such as myself, would say I don't need Facebook and I certainly don't need it for an additional cost. The same could be said for any other internet service. ISPs aren't concerned with your emails and news sites. They're concerned with YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and all the other products that are being subsidized by grandma who just wants to see the family album from Christmas vacation. The fact that you, or I for that matter, no longer pay bills via mail is irrelevant. Your desire for convenience is not a reason to regulate a private industry. And again, the data and bandwidth required for such actions is so minute that these companies have no reason to charge you extra for it -- or you wouldn't use it, you'd pay over the phone, or like we did for a hundred years prior to the internet -- by mail. Yah, this is concerning, and should absolutely be investigated. But I don't see how a lawsuit will change any actions. The Commission is required to take public comment, not listen to it. So I don't see what a lawsuit could possibly change. But back to competition... If you had real options, you could choose to go with Verizon (hypothetical), which has a contract with Netflix and offers the best Netflix experience, or you can go with Grande Communications which offers net neutral services but Netflix doesn't upload quite as fast. Grandma and Uncle Jim could still look at their photos online and pay their bills with Grande services and would pay far less because they use far less. Why are toll roads okay, when transportation is a major responsibility of the government and regulation is absolutely necessary, but "internet tolls" are so dangerous in a private industry? Too many toll roads is terrible, and when they monopolize the road ways, it becomes unfair. But if you can choose the toll road or the county road, you have real competition and real choice. If more companies could enter the market to create rival services, then consumers win. We as a society need to remind ourselves that the internet does not rule our lives, we've only allowed it to because of our obsession with action, drama, and gossip, aka Facebook I'm looking at the potential benefit in a worst case scenario described by so many that support NN -- the internet will die. Maybe we'll get off our lazy butts and play outside and then our healthcare costs will decline! Come on guys, see the silver lining! Interesting conversation...
Well, first, the buggest hurdle to startups is simply that up-front investment required is huge; if you said instead that maybe they're not inventivized enough, then I could agree with you. A way to quickly accomplish what you're looking for here would be last-mile unbundling, which is a step that not even Wheeler's FCC took, and conservatives are heavily against because it grabs existing infrastructure and lets start-ups use it. I would be remiss if I didn't mention once again, however, that NN rules do nothing to harm enactment of last-mile unbundling. I think you're focusing overly much just on the specific examples I gave. Yeah, I don't really care that much about Facebook either and wouldn't pay extra for it. But whatever service we're talking about, the fact is that an ISP charging extra for a customer to access particular domains would mean that the ISP is profiting off something it did nothing to help create. There's simply no connection there. The only thing a customer can do to affect an ISP's actual cost is to use more bandwidth. An ISP charging extra for Facebook would be like your electricity provider charging extra for you to use electricity to power refrigerators; it makes no sense. The only thing that should matter is how much of their product (bandwidth or speed) that you consume. If we go to the Netflix example: ISPs will (and have, prior to NN regulations) forced Netflix to pay for interconnection. They are incentivized to do this not just just because they get money from Netflix, but because it increases Netflix's overall cost, which makes them raise their rates, which makes cable prices look more competitive by comparison. To be totally clear: ISPs want customers to make them whole with data-cap charges or more expensive plans to make up for the fact that services like Netflix are consuming more bandwidth, then they're turning around and saying Netflix has to pay for it too via interconnection bribes (I mean, fees). It's not really that clean-cut. They are supposed to take public comment and then take action that is "in the public interest." The problem is that "public interest" has never been crisply defined, but any rational person would tend to agree that if a review of public comments is required, it follows that the content of those comments wasn't intended to be completely ignored. The only alternative explanation is that the regulations are there literally to create busy-work, no other reason. Not the most logical conclusion. Won't ever happen without regulated overbuilding. The FCC in the past has forced big telecom to make promises to build infrastructure in areas where competitors already reside to create competition. Left to their own devices, they would rarely ever do this except in the absolute most population-dense areas, because it's not profitable to compete in this industry compared to staying as de facto monopolies. Big telecom's track record for following through on overbuilding promises has been... spotty. Doubly so when a Republican chairman comes in and essentially gives them a wink and a nod that he won't enforce it. Taxpayers pay for roads via government, then the people who drive over the toll road pay back the taxpayer money that paid for the roads with the toll money. For your example to work, ALL of the "toll" money would need to go entirely to Netflix, or Facebook, or whatever service we're talking about, since Facebook built Facebook... not ISPs, since again, ISPs didn't build those things. That's the difference. And again, rival companies are unlikely to ever be able to enter the market so long as things like last-mile unbundling and overbuilding aren't enacted via regulation. Ending NN will not help those things, at all. It has the potential to unjustly enrich ISPs by letting them profit off content they didn't create (and in fact, if other people hadn't created compelling content at no cost to the ISPs, the ISPs would have a harder time selling access in the first place)... but it wouldn't help create competition.
You are very knowledgeable. What will the internet look like in a few years? How will it be different? What will these changes do?
I find it just a bit amusing that, just due to the nature of usual discourse in this forum, my first instinct is to immediately wonder whether or not your post is veiled sarcasm. (BTW, on this note, I appreciate that @Kevooooo is actually conversing, instead of mud-slinging). With that leading remark aside, my sincere answer to the question is that I don't know. And the reason I don't know is that the factors I've already discussed very briefly (enormous infrastructure costs, lack of regulated overbuilding, lack of last-mile unbundling), together with not knowing what the true near-term fate of NN (stays gone for awhile? Weaker version passed by Republican Congress? Reinstated fully if a Democrat lands in the White House in 2020?), just means there are so many combinations of ways things can turn out, you could write a very long scholarly paper about each scenario. And if someone wrote on all the scenarios, and properly expanded into the knock-on effects to other industries, it would be a thick book you could beat a man to death with. There's just too much reliance on knowing how the political landscape and public opinion will evolve, and here I was one of those people who thought there was no way Trump could possibly be president when he announced he was running. Clearly I'm not in step with what the voting public believes regarding who should run our government. My best quick guess on the policy front is that there will be several lawsuits against the FCC. Public pressure will be built up enough that Democrats in Congress will try to force NN (and possibly privacy) bills to the floor, not because they think they'll pass, but to get Republicans on records as voting against them, because they know NN and privacy protections have very broad support on both sides where American voters are concerned. From there my best bet is the Republicans respond with a watered-down version of NN to placate the masses and subvert the lawsuits against the FCC. The most heinous outcomes of NN's elimination are likely to be things most people won't notice, like the return of more hidden fees / lack of disclosure in ads, and paid prioritization deals that hit consumers' wallets indirectly through price increases. Zero-rating, and payments for zero-rating, will flourish, which will make it harder for new players to enter the online video market. Beyond those not-good, but not highly-noticable effects? Other concerns I believe to be years away. The next elections will have a huge effect on the narrative.
No more free p*rn? But what will relinquish the human sexual urges that may arise when all that pent up goo has no place to go? More stds, rape, anger?
Many great points... Heck, we're even seeing this happen in other industries... trump and the republicans removing regulations that prevent hidden fees.
not being snarky...not this time at least. your answers are well constructed as you seem to know. trolling the trolls on this bbs is easy sport. I enjoy that sometimes. I confess. You are not a troll and whether I agree or not - you come across well here. Thank you for your reply..
Haha. Thanks. I thought you were being sincere, but sometimes you seriously can't tell. Either way I figured it couldn't really hurt to give a real answer. There's one quick thing I totally forgot to mention in my list of effects (probably because my wife was yelling at me to come to bed... we've gotten into this terrible cycle of going to bed super-late every night this week for some reason). The thing I forgot is, it's *possible* some or all ISPs will decide to block Bit Torrent. It certainly does have legitimate personal and scholarly utility, but it's also such a massive vehicle for piracy. Making piracy harder definitely makes cable look more attractive. This can't happen though until the rules are officially "off the books" in a couple months, and even if ISPs planned to do so, they may wait until after the lawsuits. And, the watered-down Republican NN bill I envisioned would prohibit blocking, but allow paid prioritization, so that would make blocking BT problematic. Maybe they could make special mention that Bit Torrent is an exception against the no-blocking rule though, haha.
Interesting to note that the FCC did rule against Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent in 2008. Then in 2017 Pai and the FCC appear to have reversed that... Comcast throttling BitTorrent was no big deal, FCC says Net neutrality rules unnecessary because ISPs will do the right thing, Pai says. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/comcast-throttling-bittorrent-was-no-big-deal-fcc-says/
I hope it's been proven by now that easy to use legal offerings that provide value will trump piracy all day everyday. Think how Netflix and Apple Music Store exists where piracy options are easily available. Shutting down BitTorrent will just lead to the existing rise of file lockers/streams or back to the old days of IRC and FTP sites.
100% true of course. Blocking BitTorrent would make piracy merely easy... instead of ridiculously easy. It would stymie some of least technically-proficient, and/or make it juuuuust inconvenient enough for some to start paying for legitimate purposes. Technically ISPs could also join law enforcement agencies in playing whac-a-mole with file storage sites which are lax on copyright checks by blocking them... but as always, new ones would likely keep popping up...
Much respect to you as well for extending the same courtesy. I started responding to your last comment last night, but then got sucked down the rabbit hole trying to research certain aspects. I'll try to get back to it today, but everyone got sick at the office and I'm running solo ATM!
Cool. Actual "Debate & Discussion" in the "Debate & Discussion" truly is rare, I feel. Sad, no? BTW, don't take it amiss if I don't respond quickly... it would be because I'll be leaving pretty soon for a long trip to the Caribbean... from before Xmas and well into January... with my wife's family in the countryside, not a resort. So I will have no access to internet for quite awhile. But I can always respond when I get back if people still seem interested. To give you some more info to look into, that aren't direct responses to a particular post, I'll highlight some areas where I think we'll continue to understandably disagree. The biggest one is that I do disagree with you, strongly, over whether internet is effectively a utility, and that will be the fundamental difference at the root of a lot of the debate. Since you are viewing it through that very different lens, you will logically come to some different conclusions to the ones that I come to. Even so, remember that the high barriers to entry mean that "heavy-handed" (Pai's favorite term) regulation is the only clear and obvious way to foster competition in the industry. Last-mile unbundling, to an extent, was a thing in the US for awhile, and it probably managed to exist because it's a weird combination of commie-liberal ideals ("we're using your infrastructure for the public good!"), and worshiping at the ultra-conservative altar of capitalism, for the competition it creates so well. It's hard to mesh with moderate ideals though, and impossible to mesh with the interests of the big incumbants, which is why it isn't here now... in my opinion. They are ideological issues here which aren't hard to see, which is why Wheeler didn't even try it. The trouble is that in such a roped-off industry, a crappy solution might still be the best solution. Overbuilding is a lower wall to climb that last-mile unbundling, particularly from an actual rules perspective (again, yay capitalism, yay competition). The problem tends to be the actual enforcement. In your research you should find it will often be associated with proposed mergers/acquisitions as a way to assure the public that monopolies aren't being created (*smirk*). The ideological issue with it is that you're forcing companies to do things that *might* not be profitable in the short-term, so if we're generous in assigning intentions, you could say conservatives are allowing time for more demand to pop up prior to overbuilding. Finally, restrictions on municipal internet. I get the ideological opposition here, but the view on the ground tends to show that the opposition to it doesn't have the same practical teeth to it as opposition to unbundling or overbuilding (which I've described above). Here's the common scenario: a rural or very low population-density area has only the very crappiest of internet options available, and only 1 at that. We're talking 56k or some such crap. Citizens in those areas want solid internet connections, but private industry won't build out infrastructure because it would be like overbuilding on steroids: HUGE costs, very little return unless they're going to charge Farmer Joe $500/month for his internet. Even then, probably not profitable. So then municipalities say hey, we get why private industry won't do this, so we'll do it ourselves. And big telecom has generally responded to that by lobbying to disallow local governments from doing their own thing... first because they lose the revenue stream of that crappy internet that people are currently forced to use, but IMO more so because they *really* don't want the floodgates to open and state-subsidized internet to become a thing. The end result is that those citizens living in those areas just get screwed / caught in the middle. As a practical matter, this is actually what makes me the most angry, even though it won't affect me as long as I live in a major city. NN, comparatively, is more a matter of principle than a practical matter (in the short-term... long-term, the consequences of NN being gone are scary).
Interesting... are we starting to see the effects of the ending of Net Neutrality? One ISP is warning users that pirating content could lead to thermostat problems https://techaeris.com/2018/01/01/one-isp-warning-users-pirating-content/
huh? Pirating has always been illegal. What does this have to do with NN? Data speeds have always had different price points. Again, nothing to do with NN debate. Data caps are allowed under NN. The ISP is threatening to drop the customer to their lowest tier speed, whatever that might be. It could be 10Mbps. Then your crap article goes on talking about how you could have thermostat problems. Seriously? Getting past the click bait garbage headline, a remote control thermostat uses kilobytes of data. If you're having trouble connecting back to your thermostat because of bandwidth issues, your connection is pretty much useless. TL;DR Stop posting click bait garbage articles with no substance.
