FCC: Fascists Controlling Communication

Western Hero ^ | 23 December 2010 | Silverfiddle

[Silverfiddle]

The petty statists at the FCC have wrapped the FCC's bureaucratic tentacles around the internet.  This is just the beginning...

What is the problem this "solution" is supposed to solve?

Supposedly it will deal with "...bandwidth hogging sites such as Netflix."  Such language in a free-market with unlimited bandwith potential is not only ignorant, it is especially disturbing coming from a government bureaucrat.  Such interventions pervert the natural market incentives and spark inane arguments over who hogs more bandwidth and whether every child has a “right” to surf YouTube all day.

It's about power and control

What this FCC Beer Hall Putsch really does is establish a precedent.  It's about the Federal Government establishing primacy over the internet.  More regulations on content and speech control will follow.  Further on down the road is the government parceling out internet access and speech "rights."

How the internet works

Net Neutrality is a hard subject to grasp.  It is further befogged by those who discuss the internet as if it were a shared commons with constrained capacity. It is not. It is an agglomeration of competing operators, scalable infrastructure, ISPs and content providers.

Think of it as a network of toll roads (the backbone), that truckloads of products (content providers) use to deliver content to stores all over the US (ISP's).

We customers go to an ISP to get our YouTube and blogs, just like we go to Walmart to buy shotgun shells and DVDs.  ISPs and content providers pay the backbone operators for the bandwidth they use.  They then pass the cost on to us.  It's a great system, but some people just cannot stand the fact that market forces drive pricing.

"Usage-based pricing is a clear positive for cable, telecom, and wireless providers, but it also might be a concern for Netflix," said MF Global analyst Paul Gallant. "Depending on where the tiers were set, usage-based pricing on wire line broadband could end up deterring some people from dropping cable for over-the-top video."

A group of pointy-headed government bureaucrats cannot better determine what customers want than the free market can. Remove the regulations and let each ISP come up with their own pricing plan. That’s how cell phones work. It’s also how cable tv works. If I don't like Verizon I can switch over to Sprint, and I don't need a government nanny holding my hand.

Government should not be favoring one industry over another.  If internet demand grows, companies operating on the free market will build more capacity because they want to make more money off of us consumers. It’s a fair deal. We want more internet, and they risk their capital to build it, recouping their investment when they bring it on line and sell it to us. If it kills cable tv in the process, who cares?  It's a free marketplace--let the best technology win.

Our government does not understand the free market

An FCC official said in a statement that it would be a "cop on the beat" for "arbitrary, anti-consumer, or anti-competitive tiered pricing plans."

What a moron.  What company could make money with "arbitrary" or “anti-consumer” pricing?  Has this imbecilic statist never heard of Walmart, Amazon, or Priceline.com?  They would go broke if they were stupid enough to do what this FCC bureaucrat suggests!  This is one more reason why government has no business intervening in the free market. These petty dictators don’t even understand basic economic fundamentals.

And "Anticompetitive?"  Look no further than the US government.  They routinely snuff competition in the energy market (ethanol and wind subsidies, import tariffs on foreign ethanol), automobile and transportation market (battery powered car and Amtrack subsidies), and now they are intervening in the competition between video stores, on-line video providers and cable tv.

This ruling retards the advance of consumer technology

Look at what a lack of government regulation has done to the music industry and cell phones.  We can now listen to whatever we want whenever we want, indy bands can build an on-line fan base without expensive promoters, and we can talk to anyone in the world while paying less for phone service than out parents and grandparents did.

One day, if government gets out of the way, we will all have fiber running to our house, and the possibilities are limitless.  Phone service, tv, movies, live streaming video teleconferencing for the average family.  John Nolte explains what the entertainment future would look like:

What I also see is a world in which absolutely EVERYTHING, every television show, movie, music video, what have you, is made available for mass consumption online. Because there’s no distribution costs beyond converting to the digital file necessary for streaming, we could see, for example, complete episodes of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show made available. 

With very little upfront investment, anything and everything ever committed to film or video could find itself monetized again. And of course all of it would be available in the best sound and picture quality available.

And for the consumer? Well, that’s the best part. No more video collections clogging up the living room. For X-amount of dollars per month everything ever put on video will be one click away. For a monthly fee, sites like Netflix or Amazon will store your video collections for you.

Unfortunately, many Americans are more interested in professional ball sports or the Kardashians than they are in their freedoms.  Perhaps we could get their attention by giving them a glimpse of what their entertainment future could look like if the government would just get out of the way

Further Reading:
John Nolte - The Future of Home Video
Source-Report - The Internet Backbone
Politico  - Net Neutrality
Robert M McDowell - FCC's Threat to Internet Freedom
WaPo – FCC Market Meddling

[plain talk]

I watched Robert McDonnell’s statement on this ruling today on CNN (from Tuesday’s meeting) which was quite direct and forceful. Republican congress-critters could learn from him.

[antiRepublicrat]

The author is clueless.

whether every child has a “right” to surf YouTube all day

Net neutrality doesn't address any right to an amount of service. You still have to pay if you want to surf all day.

ISPs and content providers pay the backbone operators for the bandwidth they use. They then pass the cost on to us.

Sort of. When it comes to large networks connecting together, they do so under peering agreements. Sometimes the backbone operator is paid, sometimes not, depends on the circumstances and how much traffic is flowing which way. Comcast is actually wanting backbone operator L3 to pay them, and they do have some good arguments for that.

The important point is that the ISPs have been calling the likes of Google "freeloaders" for supposedly using their lines for free. But Google already pays for its bandwidth, and the consumers already pay the ISPs for theirs. That's the way the Internet works. Comcast would like for Google to also pay them because Comcast sees the customers as assets to be held up for ransom.

Depending on where the tiers were set, usage-based pricing on wire line broadband could end up deterring some people from dropping cable for over-the-top video

Clear pricing structures for level of access to consumers, whether it be bandwidth or usage, are not part of net neutrality.

Remove the regulations and let each ISP come up with their own pricing plan.

There are no regulations in place, nor are there any proposed by government, that would overall regulate ISP pricing to consumers. The only thing happening here is that, for example, Comcast can't charge you more for them to unblock Vonage VOIP so that they can push their own VOIP service. That is anti-competitive and violates the openness the Internet was built on.

Charging more for enough bandwidth to handle HD streaming video is not a net neutrality issue. Charging even more for a higher download limit to handle a lot of HD streaming video is not a net neutrality issue.

Now that isn't to say the FCC won't get a wild hair up their ass and go trying to do these things now that they've claimed unlimited power. But that's what the telcos get when they pay their congresscritters to block sensible, narrowly-defined net neutrality legislation in Congress.

[Lorianne]

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn at the 2010 Facing Race Conference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMeuhGC2dgA

[Silverfiddle]

You are clueless if you think the Orwellian named “Net Neutrality” really is about net neutrality.

And there are indeed regulations in place, have been for years.

I guess you’re one of those who still doesn’t have enough government in your life. Have fun with that...