FCC ends net neutrality
The FCC has voted to rescind the net neutrality rules promulgated during the Obama adminstration.
I reacted to the original rules here, but I must confess I’ve had enormous difficulty deciding on what side I stand on this issue. Each side has good arguments, and evaluating policies on net neutrality involve technical questions and hazy prognostications. So far the best article I’ve found that presents both sides of the question is this one (see also this and this for more).
From that first piece I linked:
I don’t think there is room (or patience) left for serious policy discussion in this area, even among “serious people.” This is largely because “net neutrality” has become a token representing different, broader, social values that are quite separate from the technical, legal, economic, &c, issues implicated by regulation of how ISPs handle data traversing their networks.
That’s true of an awful lot of issues, isn’t it?
Anything that throttles innovation, as net neutrality purportedly does, is bad news. Keep innovation strong, and there will be enough band width for everyone, even the millennials watching free internet porn in their parent’s basement.
If one is undecided about a regulation, then I think one should oppose it until such time as one decides in favor of it.
I don’t really get this issue either but the thing that gets me is the hysterical reactions from the pro net neutrality side. You would think they are reinstating slavery or something instead of just going back to the way things were way, way, way back in…2015!! Were things really that bad in that distant, distant past?
If the choice is between more government regulation or less government regulation, then the default should be less (or none), absent absolutely compelling reasons for more.
…especially since an UNregulated internet was doing just fine until two years ago, ….
If discernible & intractable problems appear, THEN possible government intervention may be considered; until & unless that comes about, let the markets sort it out.
A bomb threat interrupted this vote! This issue rises to that level of nutty extremism for some people. I seriously don’t get the crazed passion for this one.
The end of shared entertainment costs. Positive progress? Perhaps.
Anything that throttles innovation, as net neutrality purportedly does, is bad news.
Well, considering that “net neutrality” is spelled out in 400 pages of legalese I don’t see how it will promote innovation.
If you want to see what that will produce, you merely need to look at the time frame from the adoption of the Communications Act of 1934 and the filing of the lawsuit US vs AT&T in 1974.
https://www.bounceenergy.com/articles/texas-electricity/history-of-deregulation-telecommunication
The hyperventilating going on is quite amusing, tho. Because once I fire up a encrypted VPN tunnel, my broadband provider doesn’t know what traffic is passing thru. And if my VPN is connecting to an HTTPS port, they may not even realize it is a VPN.
Actually heard Pai on the radio yesterday and according to him none of these wild fears happened before net neutrality so why exactly would they happen now? And if they did happen this is the exact thing the FCC is there to remedy.
How the left careens from one freak out to the next is tiring to observe.
Karl Denninger over at Market-Ticker crunches the numbers and explains the financial and bandwidth aspects of Net Neutrality:
https://tinyurl.com/y8joegbb
It ISN’T all about “denying service to competitors”.
Twitter style lobbying.