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Net Neutrality Explained

delphi_ote said:
So far, we've made analogies to railroads, phone companies, and movie studios. The Sherman Anti-trust Act was invoked in all three. Why isn't it being used now?
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Didn't the FTC have to approve all of Comcast's acquisitioins and mergers?
 
BenBurch said:
Maybe; http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justic...ourt-s-campaign-finance-ruling-just-the-facts
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You actually have it backwards. Under the old rules, only big corporations like Comcast could jump through all the legal and financial hoops to have PACs and lobbyists. They got access to all the Congresscritters, and legally sanctioned television/newspaper/radio/etc ads. Smaller companies didn't and couldn't.

It's the little guys that benefitted from that ruling you don't understand (IMHO), because if you did you'd see it was a victory for free speech, and a slap to the old way where only the rich and powerful could buy access and influence.

Perhaps there wouldn't be so much knee-jerk opposition to net neutrality had other voices been heard.
 
WildCat said:
You actually have it backwards. Under the old rules, only big corporations like Comcast could jump through all the legal and financial hoops to have PACs and lobbyists. They got access to all the Congresscritters, and legally sanctioned television/newspaper/radio/etc ads. Smaller companies didn't and couldn't.

It's the little guys that benefitted from that ruling you don't understand (IMHO), because if you did you'd see it was a victory for free speech, and a slap to the old way where only the rich and powerful could buy access and influence.

Perhaps there wouldn't be so much knee-jerk opposition to net neutrality had other voices been heard.
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But in the most recent election, stories I read say most of the money came from corporations with a stake in the results...
 
WildCat said:
And...?
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If you want to say that the SC decision helps people like you and I get our voices heard, you ignore the fact that money is how that happens.

When a corporation can spend unlimited money to influence the process of an election, they have put the candidate in their debt, and have influence that lobbying could never hope to achieve.

And its not like they have stopped lobbying, either.

What the SC decision does is create a situation where corporations can literally buy candidates.

How is that helping at all?
 
BenBurch said:
As I understand it, acquisitions are not the only way to violate the Sherman act, however. The individual acquisitions might be fine, but your control of the market and the way you establish prices could constitute a violation even if you have nothing like monopoly control of the market as a whole.
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Microsoft got dinged for anti-competitive practices in the early 2000's. Not sure if that was under Sherman. You get in trouble when you start using your monopoly in destructive ways to stifle competition and maintain your monopoly.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Depending on where you are of course. Many places have very few choices. And really on the consumer end their choice does not matter. Netflix is not going to charge extra to people who view streaming content over comcast, they will just jack up everyone's prices. The only way it would become an issue would be if they blocked content, and that has played very poorly for cable companies when they did it with TV channels.
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I agree, the only real problem here is if they block a particular service.

I can see an issue with Netflix and how a company like Comcast, or any other ISP, might be concerned. Now that Netflix is rolling out a streaming service, they are going to put an incredible load on the ISP's limited bandwidth. I believe that cable ISP providers are going to be particularly hard hit given their IP platform is shared within the local community (this is why you get better download speeds late at night) and if you get a number of families streaming that latest box office release, performance is going to suffer. I imagine that's why there was the discussion of additional charges between Comcast and Level3, the CDN provider.

I used to work for the predecessor of Level3 and if a customer's demand for bandwidth went up, there were additional charges.

Eventually, Comcast is going to have to upgrade their technology. Cable only has limited bandwidth to use. Fiber optics, like Verizon, have better bandwidth speeds. If they charged more for certain streaming services, I would hope they used those monies to invest in newer technologies.

delphi_ote said:
I totally disagree with you here. The technologies are completely different. This is like saying a railroad doesn't have a monopoly, because you could always send your cargo by donkey or courier instead.
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It's not a fair comparison. Those other technologies, Verizon FIOS, AT&T Uverse, DirecTV, etc. actually are a bit faster, especially in the IP realm, than cable. So if anyone is a donkey, I would put Comcast in that group, though I don't think, at present, there's that much of a difference.

Exactly. The idea resolution, imho, would be to have the grid owned and maintained by the government (like roads or pretty much any other kind of infrastructure.) ISPs compete to deliver bits as fast and cheap as possible on a public infrastructure.

I'd also like to see a lot of these vertically integrated media companies busted up into their constituent markets.
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I could get behind a government run fiber optic company, but keep in mind that we are not only talking ISP. There is convergence happening and the fact is that all of the local connectivity coming into the home is for all forms of media and communications.

And I'm even more worried about horizontally integrated media companies like Comcast/NBC Universal. They control the content AND the means of distribution. That's a very powerful combination.
 
Skeptic Guy said:
I agree, the only real problem here is if they block a particular service.

I can see an issue with Netflix and how a company like Comcast, or any other ISP, might be concerned. Now that Netflix is rolling out a streaming service, they are going to put an incredible load on the ISP's limited bandwidth. I believe that cable ISP providers are going to be particularly hard hit given their IP platform is shared within the local community (this is why you get better download speeds late at night) and if you get a number of families streaming that latest box office release, performance is going to suffer. I imagine that's why there was the discussion of additional charges between Comcast and Level3, the CDN provider.
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So people are going to use more bandwith as time passes. That has been true for as long as there has been any kind of internet. Then charge customers based on bandwith or total content moved. I have no real issue with charging for access, it is slowing down some sites because they don't pay you off that is the issue here.
 
ponderingturtle said:
So people are going to use more bandwith as time passes. That has been true for as long as there has been any kind of internet. Then charge customers based on bandwith or total content moved. I have no real issue with charging for access, it is slowing down some sites because they don't pay you off that is the issue here.
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This is a very good point. There are discussions of the ISPs throttling down their bandwidth for lower-usage customers, ostensibly at a lesser monthly fee. For some users this may be a good idea.

Where you do get a concern is that they start charging more for the "power users", people who do a lot of streaming and gaming. They idea would be to charge them for more.

That being said, what I understand Comcast was doing was charging Netflix for this additional capacity, which then Netflix could then incorporate into their usage fee. I don't know what the charge was that Comcast was offering, but spread out across many users and on a monthly basis, it might not be that onerous. Netflix is not a basic necessity like the Internet is (now days).

Just thinking out loud at this point, but if it gives me screaming IP access, it would be worth it, IMO.
 
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